The Shadow Over Middleton
by thoth-anubis
Summary: Ron becomes enmeshed in a nightmare as he draws the attention of a mysterious woman. Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! (KP & HP Lovecraft)
1. Down By The Seaside

The Shadow Over Middleton A Kim Possible / HP Lovecraft Crossover/Fusion

**Summary:** Ron becomes enmeshed in a Lovecraftian nightmare as he draws the attention of a mysterious woman. Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! (KP/HP Lovecraft XO)

**Rating:** PG-13

**Pairing:** None directly; Kim/Ron friendship, Ron/Other... sort of.

**Genre:** Crossover fusion with the mythos of HP Lovecraft, most notably the stories "The Shadow over Innsmouth," "The Call of Cthulhu," and "Dagon" and to a lesser extent, "In the Mountains of Madness."

**Spoilers:** None as such; passing reference to events in various episodes, including "Crush" and "Rufus vs. Commodore Puddles," but none in great depth. I'm also keeping the timing fluid at this point, so whether this should be considered pre- or post- "So The Drama," remains open. Definitely sometime after mid season two, in any case.

**Notes:** In order to keep the rating down, I'm not going to explain some things beyond what the characters know or learn - and since they won't know entirely what they're dealing with, some elements will likely remain mysterious. As a consequence, if you're familiar with the above mentioned works, you'll likely be able to draw more parallels and grok some elements more than you would if you're unfamiliar with Lovecraft's stories - heck, just the note about which stories are involved is enough to tell some readers that this story will include the Deep Ones, for example, but I'm going to make it so you don't have to be familiar with Lovecraft's work to enjoy it (hopefully). Also, remember that I have about a dozen works in progress in a half dozen fandoms/genres, and my writing time is limited - just a warning, I'm not going to be updating this (or any other of my stories) daily.

**Enjoy, and please R&R!**

**Chapter 1: Down by the Seaside**

Ron Stoppable stared down at his textbook, the Latin words swirling and dancing before his eyes. "Did we cover this?" he wondered aloud, completely confused by the contents of the chapter.

Annoyed, he rolled over onto his back and watched the ocean lap at the beach, the surf glimmering with a multitude of reflected colors as the setting sun painted the sky with an infinity of hues. Ron drank in the beauty of the scenery, enjoying the way the reflections of the firelight emanating from the remains of Professor Dementor's burning lair highlighted the eddies of foam as the tide swirled over the pale sand.

Sighing in wonder at the sight, he let the wind randomly flip the pages of his textbook as he relaxed on the beach. Ron had a test tomorrow - which was why he actually bothered to bring the book along on a mission - but he still couldn't quite muster the minimal enthusiasm needed to study.

K.P. was back at the remains of the demolished lair, coordinating with the local government's men (whichever government it was... he didn't remember if Wade or K.P. had even bothered to mention where they were, and he didn't really care in either case - it wasn't like they had passports to keep track of) in the disposition of the villain's captured henchmen, and Ron frowned slightly at the memory. Kim's instructions had been pointed as she sent him away to study. _"She should stop and smell the roses once in a while,"_ he grinned, dismissing his momentary sense of unease as he watched the sun and surf, soaking in the sense of solitude and tranquility that flourished on the isolated coastline despite the burning lair atop the nearby cliff.

"What are you doing?" a voice asked curiously.

Flinching, Ron abandoned his meditation and whirled back to his book. "Studying for the Latin test, just like you told me to do, K.P." Ron quickly responded, desperately flipping through the pages of the book in search of the current chapter. Before he could find the right spot however, he realized something and his hands fell still on the book. "Wait, you're not Kim..."

"Who ever said I was?" the voice sounded amused.

Ron turned his head to face the visitor, and abruptly leaped to his feet, his heart rate skyrocketing. "Ack! Shego!"

"Who?"

Blinking, Ron slouched out of the sloppy defensive stance he'd adopted as he hurried to explain, "Sorry, it must be the way the light was reflecting off the water. Your skin looked sort of greeeeen..." Ron trailed off as he was struck by another realization. The woman standing waist deep in the water nearby was completely naked.

Ron's eyes widened, and he spun around again to face the remains of Dementor's lair, his cheeks burning nearly as brightly as the rubble. "Ack!" he repeated. Despite the gentle splashes she made as she moved through the water on her way to the shore, Ron kept his gaze firmly locked on the wreckage of the tower he'd so recently helped destroy. "Um," Ron began, but found himself unable to articulate anything at all.

A gentle chuckle from behind him caught his attention, but he kept his gaze firmly averted from the naked woman. "It must be a fascinating place indeed to hold your attention so raptly," she commented. Ron's face burned, but he kept his eyes solidly on the lair's wreckage. "What was that place?" she asked, and Ron was able to follow her movements with his ears as she approached him, the sound of her voice and her feet on the wet sand clear in his ears despite the thudding of his heart and the rushing of the blood through his veins that flooded his senses.

"Standard villainous lair - but kind of low rent. He didn't even have a piranha-filled moat," Ron answered nervously. "Professor Dementor was doing some experiments, and K.P. made sure..." he trailed off as he could feel her standing **very** close behind him.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as his body sense felt the heat of her presence. The knowledge that she was naked while being in such proximity made his voice rise abruptly in pitch as he asked, "What are you doing?"

Ron could hear the amusement in her voice as she explained, "Something about you reminds me of someone I once knew, a long, long time ago."

"Y - Yeah?" Ron gulped, his skin tingling as he felt how close she was to him. He kept his eyes averted, but it was taking all his willpower not to move.

"Mmm," she breathed, and Ron could feel the warmth of her breath on the back of his neck as his nape tensed in reaction. "So you blew up this... 'lair'?" she asked.

"K.P. did the hard part," Ron whispered, fighting the dueling urges to look back at the woman and to run away. "She fought Dementor and his goons, all I had to do was hit the self destruct bu..."

A cool finger abruptly touched the back of his left forearm, tracing the edges of a burn mark, and Ron had to fight the impulse to yank his arm away, despite how gentle her touch was. "You are too modest, so like my old... friend. You didn't get this injury by pushing a button."

"I..." Ron trailed off as her finger continued to tease at the periphery of the burn. "It was one of the henchmen's shock sticks. There were guards," Ron gulped, then added as he tried to divert his attention away from the naked woman standing just beyond his visual range, "Dementor's not like Drakken; he's a villain, but he's not..."

"You mentioned 'experiments'... What sort of experiments was this 'villain' doing?" the breathy whisper trailed across his skin, leaving goosebumps in its wake.

"Some kind of power source," Ron gulped, his back stiffening as she rolled up his right sleeve to reveal a darkening bruise. "I..." he stammered, as her fingers explored the freshly revealed injury. "I... didn't understand what Wade was talking about when he called K.P. to tell us about it before we left school to come here..."

"Would this power source be why the ocean has warmed so much in this area?"

"Maybe," Ron breathed, confused and more than a little distracted by the situation. "I don't know... Shouldn't you go put some clothes on?" he finally demanded, his voice cracking.

Ignoring his outburst, the woman simply continued running her fingers over him, tracing the length of his arms and exploring the minor wounds she encountered. "It seems you have done my job for me, brave hero," she breathed. "The high priest tasked me with finding what was causing the temperature change, and to take steps... but you appear to have already done so most convincingly."

"Priest?" Ron asked, his mind seizing on the point. "But... but... you're naked!"

She ignored this outburst as well, and Ron shuddered as he felt a fingernail roughly trace a deep scratch near his elbow, breaking the thin scab that had formed on the fresh wound. The wound released a thin trickle of blood that she painted in a slow tracery down to his wrist with one finger.

For the first time in what felt like an eternity, her hands were drawn away from him. Ron drew a shuddering breath in commingled relief and disappointment.

A strange, moist slurp from behind him, partially obscured by the sound of the rising tide, riveted his attention. _"Did she just lick my blood from her finger?"_ Ron wondered, his eyes widening in shock. _"Nah, that can't be right."_

"The brave hero has earned a reward," she told him, "especially a hero with the blood of Mother Hydra herself running through his veins - however dilutely."

"Hydra?" Ron asked curiously.

Rather than answering, she gripped him by his upper arms and spun him in place. Ron's eyes widened as he abruptly found himself facing the naked woman, and despite his best intentions, he couldn't look away. She was beautiful, and she looked a great deal like Kim. Although it was clear she was older than his best human friend, time had been kind, and her body was filled out in wonderful ways that caused Ron's mind to grind to a shuddering halt, leaving his eyes wide and his jaw dropped.

With a strange smile on her face, she leaned towards him, the flickering light of Dementor's burning lair reflecting from the glistening seawater bedewing her limbs and shining from her eyes. As Ron's own eyes widened further, her hands rose up his arms splayed across the sides of his neck. With inescapable force she drew his face over to meet her own, and before Ron's frozen brain could fathom her intent, she was kissing him.

"Whurgle," Ron exhaled in surprise as she increased the pressure, holding him tightly against her as she kissed him thoroughly. Ron's eyes widened as he tried to pull away, but she was stronger than he, and that strength combined with his fear of touching her naked body prevented him from gaining sufficient leverage to escape. He was helpless in her embrace, and she seemed to enjoy the way he struggled in a futile attempt to escape her.

The texture of the skin of her fingers seemed to change in some undefinable way, coarsening against the soft skin of his neck. Her grip tightened, and his lips began to sting as the pressure she exerted increased. Before he could panic at the change in the situation, Ron felt a sudden tension grip his mind, as though his spirit and soul were being compressed along with his physical self.

His struggles slowly tapered off as the pressure on his mind continued to mount, piercing into his being like a dagger. It quickly became too much to bear, and he lost consciousness.

When she finally released him, Ron slumped to lie in a crumpled heap on the damp sand at her feet. He was unconscious, and utterly overwhelmed.

xxXXxx

_Ron?_

Ron?

**"RON!"**

"No! Don't kiss me! And put some clothes on!" Ron shouted as he jerked his upper body off the sand. "Uh..." Ron blinked as he desperately looked around, but there was no sign of the strange woman.

Kim Possible raised one eyebrow as she watched his sleepy confusion with a mix of irritation and annoyance, and though she'd never admit to it even under torture, amusement. "Never, ever tell me about that dream."

"What?" Ron asked as he unsteadily climbed to his feet.

"Never mind," Kim smirked, her amusement growing along with her irritation. "But, geez, Ron, how could you fall asleep at a time like this? You were supposed to be studying for the Latin test."

"I was," Ron blinked in confusion. _"What happened?"_ he asked himself, before continuing aloud, "I..." he trailed off as he looked around, "Wait... Where'd she go?"

Kim rolled her eyes. "Enough about the dream already. We've wasted enough time, and we've still got to cross the Atlantic to get home. Where's your book?"

It was hard to see in the dim ambient light that was all that was left in the aftermath of sunset and the faint glow of the dying embers in the remnants of Dementor's tower, but it was still bright enough to see that Ron's textbook had disappeared. As he watched, the incoming tide lapped around his booted feet, before the swirling water receded and smoothed the sand into a smooth and featureless expanse. "I don't see it... maybe she took it with her."

"Enough about your dream girl. And I repeat... never _ever_ tell me the rest of it. The tide must have taken your book. How could you be so careless, Ron? Now you can't even study on the flight back!"

Dazed and confused, Ron awkwardly scrubbed his face with his hands, dislodging some of the drying sand that had become encrusted to it. "I don't understand..." he mumbled, "She was here, and then she wasn't..."

Irked, Kim grabbed him by one arm and began dragging him towards the burning lair. "Come on, lover boy. The police are going to give us a ride to the airport. I'll bet Mr. Barkin gives you another detention to go along with the extra homework. Be sure to say 'hi' to Vinnie and Big Mike for me."

Ron stumbled along in her wake, confused and uncertain, and nursing a major headache.

xxXXxx


	2. District Policy

**Chapter 2: District Policy**

"Stoppable! Front and center!"

Startled from his daydream, Ron leaped to his feet and hurried (although Mr. Barkin would have described his pace as lackadaisical) over to the administrator at the entrance to the classroom. Shaking his head in rueful disgust, Barkin turned away from the shameful display and ordered, "Possible! You too. And bring your kit."

Her brow furrowing in surprise, Kim collected her books and as she passed Ron's seat, collected his abandoned books as well. She handed Ron his stuff, and watched him force his books inside - unconsciously wincing at the sound of crumpling papers that resulted from his haphazard packing and casual movements - before slinging his bag over one shoulder.

"The rest of you, carry on. Possible, Stoppable, come with me," Barkin turned and led the two curious students out of their English class. The rest of the class, used to the odd happenings and interruptions that seemed to surround the duo, simply returned to their schoolwork as the group left.

"Is there a mission, Mr. B?" Ron asked curiously. "I didn't hear the Kimmunicator going off."

"Negatory," Mr. Barkin denied, waving the two to precede him into the teachers' lounge.

Eyes widening briefly in surprise at the response, the teens entered the forbidden room, and were surprised to see their Latin teacher sitting next to an older man in a tweed jacket.

"Good, you're both here," Mr. Barkin addressed the adults, before turning his attention back to the teens. "Possible, sit. Stoppable, give her your rodent, then go with Professor Johnson. He'll explain everything."

Reluctantly, Ron reached into his cargo pants and brought out his snoozing naked mole rat. "Hey!" a tiny voice protested, but under Barkin's unwavering glare, reluctantly climbed into Kim's outstretched hand.

"Ron?" the man Barkin had identified as Professor Johnson asked, gesturing to the door.

Even more reluctantly, Ron slowly walked out of the room. He paused in the doorway to wave goodbye to his friends, and then he was gone. The door swung closed behind him with an ominous clank as it automatically sealed.

"What's going on, Mr. Barkin?" Kim asked as she set Rufus on the table, then sat beside her Latin teacher.

"New district policy," he explained curtly.

"Mr. Barkin, I know Ron lost his textbook, but it was on a mission in Africa, so it wasn't really his fault. We had to stop..." Kim began, but he continued before she could protest further.

"It's not about the missing book, Possible. Frankly, he's lost so many by this point it's a wonder he still has _any_. At least he reimburses the district for the lost matériel... No, this is something different. There were some irregularities on Stoppable's Latin test, and after the fiasco of 'his' sudden math genius, the district set some strict guidelines to follow whenever anything the least bit... _irregular_ happens around Stoppable's schoolwork. It's supposed to prevent future embarrassments to the Board of Education."

"Professor Johnson is the Latin teacher at Middleton Community College," Mrs. Lopez interrupted the explanation. "He's going to be administering Ronald's retest."

"And while he's doing it, Possible, you're in charge of ensuring his pet rodent isn't giving him any answers," Mr. Barkin concluded the explanation, crossing his arms over his barrel chest and looking grim.

Rufus sulked at the situation, but was mollified when he found a cache of saltines near the salt shaker. His tiny claws made short work of the cellophane wrapper, and he was soon munching away on crackers that were nearly as large as he was.

Kim blinked in surprise at the revelation. "You know, Heg... I mean, the manager of Go City's Bueno Nacho once told me that the corporation did something similar - set down strict policies for a manager to follow if Ron ever shows up at their restaurant."

Mrs. Lopez smiled in amusement, but Mr. Barkin mumbled something under his breath. Although Kim couldn't hear it clearly, it sounded something like, "disaster waiting to happen."

They fell into an uncomfortable silence, waiting for Ron and the professor to return and counting the seconds as they ticked past. The mood even affected Rufus, and after finishing only four packages of the crackers, he curled up by Kim's hands and dropped back to sleep on the tabletop.

Time dragged as they waited for Ron to return. Nerves and anticipation kept Kim too keyed up to work on her homework, so like the faculty who were monitoring her (although it was unspoken, it was the only reason she could think of for being isolated and monitored during Ron's retest) and Rufus for potential interference with Ron's testing, she simply watched the clock and occasionally petted the slumbering naked mole rat.

Although it seemed an eternity, it was only about 45 minutes later when the staff room door opened once more. Ron returned, and to Kim's amazement, he was chatting amiably with Professor Johnson.

In Latin.

Fluently.

"Well?" Barkin raised an eyebrow when they finally fell silent, refusing to look directly at Ron until he had received an answer.

Johnson simply shrugged. "It's all him. Fascinating, really. He's become an expert in conversational Latin - _sermo cotidianus_, I suspect. Amazingly adept too - there's probably no more than a dozen or so in the world that I can think of who are as good as or better at it than he is."

"What do you mean by 'conversational' Latin, Professor?" Kim asked.

"Just what it sounds like - he speaks it like a native speaker, not like someone who's studied the purified and relatively static modern book or church Latin. He's fascinating to talk to. I recognized loan words from a dozen other languages including Persian, Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic - all chronologically accurate, and some of the idiomatic usages he uses are simply delightful. But I digress...

"Simply put, he speaks Latin like a native from the time of the Roman Empire would have. If you'll pardon the expression, he's practically a paleolinguist."

"A boo-yah!" Ron cheered, raising one triumphant fist into the air.

"Thank you for your time, Professor," Mr. Barkin said while shaking the man's hand. "The check from the district should arrive in 7 to 10 working days."

"It was my pleasure. Let me know if I can be of any further help," Professor Johnson smiled, traded a quick goodbye in Latin with Ron, then departed, leaving Ron alone with Kim and the teachers.

"Alright, Stoppable," Barkin demanded. "What weird ray were you zapped by this time?" His mouth twisted in disgust, possibly as he remembered his own experience with one of Kim's adventures at Lake Wannaweep. "Or was it more mutagenic ooze? Or maybe some evil _brain sucking_ device you got yourself into?"

"There was nothing like that, Mr. B," Ron began in Latin.

"Speak **English**, Stoppable!" Barkin barked.

"Sorry," Ron repeated himself in English, then added, "it was nothing like that - just this weird power thingy. The henchmen didn't even have ray guns - just shock sticks." He rolled up one sleeve of the black turtleneck he wore beneath his red jersey and pointed to a mostly healed burn on his forearm for emphasis.

"He's right," Kim confirmed. "And Ron never even went close to the reactor, just the control console."

"Hmm," Barkin frowned in distaste at the mystery. "Knock it off, Stoppable!" he finally ordered, as Ron squirmed uncomfortably, rubbing at his neck. "Your squirming is giving me a headache." Kim was sure that Barkin's shudder and quick touching of the sides of his own neck was definitely a flashback to Wannaweep - an unconscious verification that he wasn't sprouting gills again.

"I can't help it, Mr. B," Ron complained. "My neck hurts. When that woman kissed me, she was holding on really tightly." His eyes suddenly widened as he realized what he had said. He began to blush ferociously and wouldn't meet anyone's eyes.

Mrs. Lopez looked amused, but Kim rolled her eyes. "Enough with the dream woman, Ron! She was never there, she didn't kiss you, and she _didn't_ steal your Latin book!"

"I keep telling you, she wasn't a dream! She looked sort of like you, but older and..." he blushed, and said only, "bigger, and I thought her skin was sort of green like Shego's but it was just a trick of the light... She said something about me being a hero, and deserving a reward, then she kissed me, but..."

"Gah!" Kim closed her eyes and reached down to cover Rufus' ears with one hand. "Enough! Enough, already! _Way_ too much information, Ron!"

"Stoppable," Mr. Barkin began, then stopped and closed his eyes and counted slowly to ten in an effort to lower his blood pressure. "As a fellow member of the male gender, and in particular as the teacher who had to give you certain _health_ lectures, I can tell you one thing with absolute certainty... You don't talk about such things in front of the ladies! In other words, _keep your twisted fantasies to yourself, Stoppable_!"

"But she wasn't a dream," Ron whispered to himself.

"Leave the poor boy alone," Mrs. Lopez chuckled as she left. She was old enough to be amused rather than offended by the foibles of youth, and she often found Ron's antics entertaining - when taken in moderation. "It just means he's maturing. Kind of."

Kim hurried after her, thoroughly disquieted - although whether the true source of her discomfort lay in learning that Ron's dream woman looked like herself, or that she was a mix of herself and Shego, she couldn't answer.

"I can't believe I have to add something like this to the lectures," Mr. Barkin muttered to himself as he left, leaving Ron alone in the lounge with his pet. "Who'd have thought even Stoppable would need to be told not to...?"

"You believe me Rufus, don't you, buddy?" Ron asked, stroking his pet gently.

Rufus, who had been at the vet's office and consequently missed the entire encounter, simply yawned, rolled over, and went back to sleep without answering.

"She _was_ real," he whispered to the empty lounge. His fingers briefly touching the sides of his neck and his lips as though to recapture the feeling of her touch from the lingering soreness. But as was usual following an intense mission, he had enough bumps, bruises, cuts, and scrapes on his body that even Ron had to admit to himself that residual tenderness from the strength of her hold was hardly concrete proof of her existence. "She was...?" he insisted aloud, but Ron could hear the doubt in his own voice.

xxXXxx

Since not even Ron could explain where his sudden linguistic mastery had come from - and whether she had truly been there or not, he couldn't think of any way the woman could possibly have been the source of it in any case. Eventually he, like everyone else, simply dismissed it as just another weird side effect of spending time in villainous lairs - sort of like being under the influence of a truth ray or becoming a muscle bound hulk overnight. Odd things like that just seemed to happen to Ron, even if this one was more persistent than most.

To confuse matters further, since the version of Latin that he had mysteriously learned differed from the language he was being tested on in class - dramatically in some ways, he found his knowledge of the classical language to be a decidedly mixed blessing. At times Ron actually found himself _more_ confused, not less, by Latin class, despite his sudden inexplicable mastery.

Time passed, and as Kim's certainty of the illusory nature of the woman he had met by the ocean remained unshaken, Ron's conviction of her existence gradually wore away like a pebble in the surf. Still, no matter how fragile his belief in her became, he could never quite shake the image of her face closing to meet his, her eyes alight with an infernal reflection amid the smooth, pale green of her complexion...

That image continued to haunt his dreams, and nothing he did, nor anything Kim could say or do, ever changed that fact.

xxXXxx


	3. It's Better Where It's Wetter

**Chapter 3: It's Better Where It's Wetter**

"It's such a pity you chose not join me, Alpha," Gemini sneered, stroking Pepe's head as he loomed over Team Possible from atop the elevated pillar that dominated the control room of his undersea lair. "As a consequence, your ending will be sudden, and brutal." A momentary cheerful note entered his voice as he added, "Still, if it's any consolation, I'll think of it with a smile as I'm lying on the beach in Bimini."

"Sorry, _Sheldon_," Kim sneered right back at the villain as Rufus chirped his angry agreement from his perch atop Ron's shoulder. "You should know by now that Ron will never join you. And you're not going anywhere except to a Global Justice prison cell."

The chihuahua in the villain's arms erupted into a frenzied series of yapping barks, his tiny teeth bared in hatred as the hated name of Gemini's sister's organization assaulted his ears. Gemini turned away from the teens, hunching over his tiny pet in order to whisper soothing words and reassurances.

While the villain was distracted, Kim glanced around the colossal room, searching for a way to reach him. To her temporary dismay, she found that the retraction of the stairs that had surrounded the central pillar (leaving a smooth, featureless steel expanse, impossible to climb) had left Gemini isolated and secure in his commanding position high above the rest of the room.

"You'll pay for that as well, Kim Possible," Gemini intoned sonorously, once he had soothed his angry pet, "won't she my little sweetums," his voice dropped to inaudibility as he crooned comfortingly to his dog. With a malevolent chuckle and a dramatic motion of one arm culminating in a sweep of one prosthetic finger, he viciously stabbed a button on the control panel beside him.

Kim blinked as nothing happened despite the melodramatic villainous posturing. "Was that supposed to do something?" she wondered aloud, then winced as she realized, _"Oh, man... I just totally jinxed us!"_

An instant after Kim spoke, red lights flared into life along the walls, accompanied by loud warning klaxons. **"Ten minutes to self destruct. Warning. Ten minutes to self destruct,"** a mechanical sounding voice announced.

"Darn it," Kim commented, looking once more for a route to Gemini - and more importantly, the self-destruct controls he stood next to.

Beside her, Ron had dropped into a combat stance as Gemini's henchmen had leaped into motion, but the few red-and-white-clad goons who even came close to the duo were much more concerned with reaching escape pods and getting away from the self-destructing lair than they were fighting the intruders. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, the henchmen had all fled, leaving only Gemini and Team Possible in the control room as the warning echoed ominously, **"Nine minutes to self destruct."**

"Good bye, Kim Possible," Gemini intoned as he pressed another button. Behind him, a portal irised open into the central support pillar, revealing a hollow within the structural member. "This lair may not be 20,000 leagues under the sea, but I believe you'll find the depth to be more than adequate to finish you off - should the self-destruct fail to do the job, that is. But don't worry - wherever you're going in the next life, rest assured that my sister will shortly be joining you." He laughed evilly as he stepped through the portal, Pepe's wheezing growl adding a bizarre mocking counterpoint.

As the iris was closing, in one fluid move, Kim raised her arm, aimed, and fired her grappling gun. The hook on the end of the rope flew straight and true and seated itself solidly through one arm of Gemini's throne-like chair. As she was hoisted into the air, the powerful motor contained in the mechanism disguised as a hair dryer rapidly lifting her, Ron followed suit, quickly aiming and firing his grappling gun in turn.

As Kim unhooked her grapnel and triggered the retraction mechanism to coil the remainder of the line, she caught a flash of black out of the corner of her eye. Stepping quickly to one side, she watched as Ron's grappling hook flew past her head, trailing a length of rope and, fluttering at the end like a flag, Ron's pants. "Ron," she called down in exasperation. "Quit playing around."

Ron chuckled nervously, pulling the hem of his black turtleneck down to partially hide the large red hearts that adorned his yellow boxer shorts, but didn't respond.

A rumble and a vibration accompanied by a faint glimpse of motion outside the mammoth observation bubble far overhead heralded Gemini's escape. "And there he goes," Ron mumbled.

Scowling, Kim turned away from the escape hatch to examine the control panels as Ron attempted to reload his grappling gun, but before he could restore it to operation, she had dropped down to stand beside him again. "Changes have been locked out of the system. We've got to get out of here." Suiting action to words she grabbed Ron by an arm and ran from the control room, the spinning alarm lights painting their path in vibrant crimson hues.

They ran down the passageway, their feet crashing on the metal grating underfoot. As they barreled down the corridor, Ron was reminded again of how much the entire installation resembled the elaborate structure encircling and winding its way around his bedroom that he'd built and enlarged over time to create a play space for Rufus. He opened his mouth to point out the similarities of construction to Kim, but the sight of the scowl on her face made him decide to save the observation for later.

Hurriedly retracing their steps, and with Ron hard on Kim's heels, they ran for the airlock they'd broken into when they'd infiltrated the Worldwide Evil Empire's base, only to run into a major problem. A sealed hatchway blocked their route, with no control mechanism in sight.

**"Six minutes to self destruct."**

"Now what, K.P.?" Ron asked, his eyes roving over the bare metal of the door and the surrounding walls, unable to locate any means of removing the obstruction.

"I saw a docking bay back a few turns... Come on," she ordered, drawing him into a run once more.

They charged back the way they had come, and as they neared the bay, they began to see signs of the WEE henchmen's furious flight: abandoned helmets and goggles, weapons, and even some personal possessions, all discarded in the interest of hastening flight. Eventually, they reached the end of the passageway and charged into a large circular room.

Sealed hatchways lined the perimeter, and a red indicator light burned above each, showing that the escape pod that had once lain beyond the doorways had already been jettisoned. They felt a moment of panic as they turned once more to retreat, their escape stymied again, but as they turned, they discovered a single green indicator glowing above the airlock immediately to the left of the archway they'd passed through while entering into the room.

Either by chance - the fleeing henchmen not noticing the available pod in the same manner as Kim and Ron had almost missed it - or by simple paucity of numbers - WEE never had as many personnel in a single installation as Professor Dementor or some of the other, better bankrolled villains did (plus, with code names restricted by the number of Greek letters - and with "Alpha" reserved, besides - the number of personnel who could man any given base was minimal) - one of the escape pods was still available.

Breathing a sigh of mutual relief, they approached the hatch, but as Kim toggled the door and revealed the escape vehicle located within, their breath caught in their throats. The pod only had room for a single passenger.

**"Five minutes to self destruct."**

"Don't worry K.P.," Ron smiled, "There's another one over there."

Kim turned to look where he pointed, but saw only the red glow of an empty launch bay. But once she was distracted and looking away, Ron made his move. As Kim yelped in surprise, his sudden push to her upper back sent her flying into the single captain's chair inside the ovoid pod. Before she could protest, Ron grabbed Rufus from his shoulder with a haste that left a tiny series of parallel scratches across the side of his neck where startled claws had scrambled for a hold. "Keep an eye on her, buddy," he said as he tossed the naked mole rat gently through the airlock and into Kim's startled and hastily raised hands.

Before Rufus or Kim could do more than voice a surprised "Hey," at his actions, Ron's fist crashed into the launch control, breaking through the protective cover and hitting the red button it protected, activating the mechanism. Through a small viewport, Ron watched the door of the pod slide closed, hiding the silent movement of her lips as she shouted his name from inside the pod, Kim's voice inaudible through the thick Lexan of the window. With a whoosh of escaping bubbles, the pod was ejected upwards and away from the doomed base. The green indicator light over the door quietly flickered out as a red bulb began to burn in its stead.

Ron looked at the scrapes on his knuckles where his skin had yielded to the fracturing plastic cover, and a small smile creased his lips. "At least she made it," he whispered to himself.

Blinking a tear from his eyes, he hurried back down the passageway they'd so recently come through, running blindly through the maze of tubular accessways, rooms, and crawlspaces, seeking another escape route. As the countdown inevitably ticked away, doors and hatchways seemed to close and seal themselves automatically, restricting Ron's access, and forcing him to backtrack several times, wasting increasingly precious time.

With his options becoming more and more limited, and as he found himself nearing an archway very much like the one into the launch bay he'd just sent K.P. to safety from, he took a chance. Even as the computer announced, **"Three minutes to self destruct,"** Ron rolled under a descending barrier and found himself inside a chamber that appeared to be used as a staging area for scuba access to and from the base.

It was just what Ron needed... if only he still had the scuba gear they'd used to infiltrate the base. From the empty racks lining one wall that previously had held pressurized tanks, it was clear that the WEE henchmen had preceded him here, as well.

Laughter bubbled up in his throat as Ron looked down into the artificial lagoon that lay at the center of the room. He had found his escape route out of the base - and into the depths of the ocean - but he remained as trapped as he had been before, and thanks to the sealed doorway behind him, he was out of other options. He sank to his knees, and bathed in the crimson glow of the warning lights, tried to compose himself in preparation for meeting his maker.

"You seem to be making a habit of doing my work for me," a voice interrupted his thoughts before he could compose an actual prayer. "I think I like that."

Ron's eyes snapped open, and as his head turned to face the source of his voice, he was startled to find himself staring at the woman he'd dreamed of so many months before on the other side of the planet. "You..." he breathed.

xxXXxx

Kim Possible frantically punched commands into the small control panel inset into the curved wall of the escape pod to no effect. The simple computer built into the vehicle had been designed to ferry a single passenger to safety - and to prevent said (probably panicked and likely untrained) passenger from endangering his or her life while doing so. Consequently, it ignored the random and often suicidal commands she punched into its controls as she tried to override the system, and continued to slowly make its way towards the surface.

Losing her patience with the machine, and fighting the urge to smash it, she drew the Kimmunicator out of a pocket in the side of her pants and began hitting the emergency button. The inset display panel hummed to life, and for only the second time that she could recall, she was greeted by a display saying "Searching for signal..." with a series of animated waveforms to represent the machine's search for a connection to Wade's computer. "We must be too deep for the signal to reach," she whispered to herself. Rufus patted her ear comfortingly as he snuggled against her neck, but Kim's vision blurred as her eyes filled with tears. She stared blindly into the unchanging display on the device, her thumb hitting the emergency button again and again to no effect.

A sudden sharp shock jolted the pod, and Kim was thrown back in her chair as an oddly muted rumble shuddered through the pod, the water that surrounded the vehicle transmitting the aftermath of the undersea base's destruction. Rufus grunted as he slid off the top of Kim's shoulder at the sudden impact, landing ignominiously in her lap as the tiny pod was rocked back and forth.

"Ron..." Kim breathed, frantically hitting the emergency button again and again. "This isn't happening... this can't be happening..."

Rufus whimpered, and curled into a ball, hiding his face under his tail.

"Ron..." Kim's tears flowed freely, "Don't worry Rufus, he'll be fine. You'll see..." but her voice cracked, and even as the Kimmunicator caroled another unsuccessful attempt to contact Wade, in the silent darkness of the floating pod, she wept.

xxXXxx

**To be continued...**

Author's Note: Not to spoil the cliffhanger (Like you couldn't tell that Ron's not really dead... This'd be a pretty lousy story if that was the case), but the pieces are now in place, and the crossover elements are about to kick in. Things will take a darker turn - as a Lovecraft inspired story inevitably will - but will the Disney (TM) magic be able to overcome the Mythos? Tune in to find out... and R&R!

xxXXxx


	4. I'd Call That A Bargain

**Chapter 4: I'd Call That A Bargain...**

"You..." Ron breathed.

"Me," the woman acknowledged with a smile as she hoisted herself from the scuba lagoon. As she had been the last time he'd seen her, she was naked.

Ron's cheeks burned, giving them the shade of old brick in the crimson glow of the emergency lighting. He was too shocked by her presence to show more of a reaction; he simply stared mutely into her eyes.

**"Two minutes to self destruct."**

The computer's announcement jolted Ron from his distracted state. "Quick... you've got to get out of here! This whole place is going to blow!"

She raised one eyebrow. "Your work again?"

Ron shook his head, "Not this time - not directly... but there's no time to explain. Please, you've got to go while there's still time!"

As though there were all the time in the world, she glanced around the small room, seeing the distinct lack of egress. "And you?"

He had no response.

"I've thought about you a lot since the last time we met," she continued, "and I'd hoped to see you again." She smiled, unashamed of her nudity as she stood before Ron, her skin dyed the color of an abattoir's floor by the emergency lighting.

Ron was too distracted to properly appreciate what was on display before him. "Please, forget about me," he urged, pointing to the lagoon that she'd used to enter the doomed undersea base. "Just get out of here before it's too late."

"You have done me some services," she continued, ignoring his increasingly frantic attempts to send her away. "And received a minor reward from me, as well. If I take you away from this place, I would think this would shift the balance of the debt the opposite way. Do you agree?"

Shocked, Ron blinked in surprise. "You have a way out of here... for me, too?"

She stepped closer. "Yes; will you let me take you from this place? Will you accept the burden of debt by doing so?"

"Yes," Ron dazedly answered, captivated by the gleam in her eyes.

She smiled; it was a mysterious smile with a thousand layers of meaning, and Ron was lost in it. "Drink," she ordered, handing him a small flask.

Ron looked down at the container in his hand. _"She's naked... where did she get...?"_ "Where...? What...?" he began.

She interrupted before he could properly frame the answer. "As you pointed out, time is short. Drink. And fear not. It is a form of mead - of sorts."

"I'm not old enough to drink," Ron muttered, unscrewing the lid.

Amused, she retorted, "Nor will you ever be, should you not drink now." She watched his face twist as he tasted it, and warned, "Drink all of it."

**"One minute to self destruct."**

Ron's tongue lolled from his mouth as he gagged, the flask slipping from between his slack fingers to clatter on the deck. "Yuck," he shuddered. "What was that?"

"Come," she instructed, ignoring his question. She jumped into the lagoon, her sleek body creating barely a ripple as she entered the water. Ron hesitated on the side, standing on the cement and steel lip of the pool.

When Ron made no move to enter after several long seconds had passed, she reached up, grabbed his bare leg just above the slippers he'd worn beneath the fins he'd used to swim to the base so long before, and with a strength that greatly surpassed his own, simply pulled him in. "Hey!" he barely had time to yelp before his head went under.

She ducked beneath the surface, and pointed to the underwater passage leading out of the hidden lair. Before Ron could breach the surface to fill his lungs with a fresh breath, she swam into the tunnel, dragging him with her by one leg.

Ron struggled briefly, but her hand simply tightened on his ankle as she swam. Eventually, he was concentrating too hard on trying not to breathe as he was dragged through the water to worry about struggling.

She swam faster than Ron would have believed possible - especially since she was burdened by his limp weight. He could only guess the rate of their travel based on the distantly and sporadically spaced emergency lights which were intermittently visible in the tunnel, but even these markers flew by so quickly that true estimation of their speed was all but impossible.

They finally reached the end of the passage and shot into open water. Ron caught a faint glimpse of sparks as he was dragged out, the crackling discharge erupting into the water from what had once been a control panel near the opening to the passage they'd emerged from - before the metal had been clawed apart as thoroughly as Shego might have done.

Despite having escaped the base, she didn't slow down. Instead, she actually increased her speed (in Ron's half-blind guesstimation) as she dragged his unresisting body deeper into the ocean. She arched her back in a move as graceful as a porpoise's as they passed over the lip of an undersea cliff, then dove down, rocketing ever deeper into the abyssal deeps.

As the glow from the lights surrounding Gemini's base faded into the distance, the darkness became all but absolute. And as the cliff blocked Ron's line of sight, it became even more so. At this depth, light from the surface never penetrated, and now that they were beyond the feeble range of the WEE installation's illumination, the sheer blackness was indescribable.

But the absence of light did not impede their travel. Even when the darkness was complete, and Ron could barely tell whether his eyes were open or closed, she continued to drag him through the water, deeper and further away from the doomed base.

Between the lack of light, the unusual mode of travel, and the sheer shock of the last few minutes, Ron had totally lost track of time. The only hint he received of the countdown's completion was a release of the grip on his leg.

Before he could think of the implications, or do anything to prepare himself, a muted rumble filled his ears. Distantly he wondered what it must have been like to be closer to - or even _in_ - the base, if he could hear it this well from so far away. _"Would I have felt anything? Or would it have been so quick that I'd be dead before realizing it?"_

The WEE base first exploded, then imploded as the ocean rushed to extinguish the flame and reclaim the pitiful fraction of its depths that man had so briefly and arrogantly attempted to claim as his own. Even as the rumble of the base's destruction still shuddered through Ron's bones, a shockwave thrummed through the water.

Ron gasped as his chest was struck by a hammer blow as the wave, borne of the fiery death throes of the base, reached him. Despite the depth and the distance, the force that struck him was potent enough that the feeble volume of air he'd somehow retained in his lungs during his wild ride through the Stygian darkness of the ocean erupted from between his lips in a pained grunt.

Ron panicked as his lungs flooded with water. He thrashed, trying to purge himself of the fluid, blindly fighting against the logical and inescapable conclusion that he would very shortly be dead, drowned in the eternal darkness of Davey Jones' locker. But nearly as quickly as the panic had erupted, he stilled once more. He suddenly realized, _"I'm breathing... how am I breathing? I should be dead."_

The woman who had brought him out of the doomed base chuckled, and to Ron's ears, the sound seemed to be utterly unaffected by either the staggering pressure at the ocean bottom, or the complete lack of air.

"Am I dead?" he wondered aloud, lazily sweeping his arms and legs to hold himself still and upright in the water. "I'm breathing and I don't feel cold..."

"You're not dead," she replied, swimming back to him. In the absolute blackness of the ocean depths, he couldn't see her, but he felt the wake of her movements as she slowly began to swim in circles around his hovering form as he treaded water.

"Then how...?" Ron wondered aloud, then realized, "The flask! It must be... What was that stuff?"

"It is an old recipe; a _very_ old recipe in fact. From time out of mind, it has been used by many races to traverse the sea of stars. For us, in the here and now, until the stars are right, it is mostly used for bringing honored... 'guests' to temple services."

"Cool... I wish K.P. and me had more of that stuff. Maybe Wade can make us some. It'll come in handy since I'm not the best swimmer."

"That will change," her voice sounded faintly amused once more. "And perhaps he can, at that; it is not truly a complicated magic."

"Magic?" Ron blinked in surprise. _"You know, actually, that explains a **lot**,"_ he thought. He knew magic existed; for all his fear and hatred of Lord Monkey Fist, he couldn't deny there was _something_ underlying his belief in the Mystical Monkey Power - Ron had felt its touch for himself. And if magic existed, it certainly could explain how he could learn a dead language all but instantaneously, and more importantly, how he could possibly be alive and breathing when by all rational thought, he should be dead - either crushed by the pressure, drowned, or chilled beyond survival by the frigid conditions. "Oh... Well, maybe not. Wade doesn't deal well with magic. I think it annoys him for some reason."

She laughed. "And here I was concerned you would reject the very possibility; it was the one thing I myself had the most difficulty learning to accept, having been so logical and rational before..." she didn't complete the thought, choosing instead to change the subject. "And who is this... K.P.? The Kim you mentioned the last time we met?"

Ron blinked, idly glancing around in the Stygian darkness that surrounded him, but unable to see her - or anything else for that matter. _"Which is probably a good thing, since she's likely still naked,"_ he thought distantly. "Yes; Kim Possible. She's my best friend; you've probably heard of her, since she saves the world a lot. You know... come to think of it, I don't think we've ever introduced ourselves either... Funny," he mused, "Can't imagine why I've been so distracted every time we meet. I'm Ron. Ron Stoppable."

For a moment, Ron felt the wake of her passage still, and he realized she'd briefly stopped swimming. After a brief pause, she resumed her circling of him, and moments later, broke the silence. "K.P... Kim... Possible... and Rrron Stoppable. My, my. How... _fraught_ a situation. And truly an explanation of sorts, as well."

She pronounced his name oddly; trilling the "R" and giving the vowels an odd inflection. _"Which is weird since she doesn't really have an accent,"_ he noted. "Huh?" Ron asked in confusion.

"It is of no great import," she responded easily, swimming closer and closer, until his fingertips intermittently began to touch her skin as she circled. A situation he found easily distracting enough to make him lose sight of the odd way she had said his name.

"Okay," Ron replied, his brow wrinkling in confusion, _"'It is of no...' Oh! She means, 'No big.'"_ Then his eyes widened and he found himself trying not to think about what part of her body could have just brushed across his fingertips. "And you are?"

He could sense her amusement once more. "I think," she paused, then added, "I would like it if you called me... M.P."

Ron blinked. "Sure; that's a bon-diggity name. But what's it stand for?"

"You'll learn in time; you'll learn a great many things in time," she replied, and her amusement remained plain. "But now is not the time for questions."

Before he could react, she abruptly closed the distance between them, and pressed herself flat against his back. Ron stiffened as her arms and legs intertwined with his, and her body molded itself to his back.

"Wha... What are you doing?" he asked, his limbs stiffening to immobility. He felt... strange; as though heat were radiating into him from every point where her body touched his - even through his clothes.

"Working my magic on you," she whispered in his ear. "The old blood is strong, and yours is ancient indeed. Can you feel your blood awakening? Do you hear the call?"

Ron remained silent since it was not his blood he felt awakening - or at least not exclusively - and since he'd lost his pants back at the base, he was more than a little... preoccupied. "Ah... um..."

She kissed him once on each side of his neck, taking her time while doing so, sucking and nibbling with surprisingly sharp teeth at his skin. Just when Ron was sure something would burst, he was abruptly released.

"It is done," she told him, her voice tired, but triumphant.

Ron looked about in the darkness, eyes wide. Things certainly didn't feel done from his perspective, but he was confused and uncertain enough that his only response was, "What?"

"In time, you will understand without the need for explanation."

Shaking with the strength of his emotions and the fire burning in his blood Ron stared into the darkness.

"It will shortly be time for you to go," she continued. "It will be some time before you are ready to join me. Tell me," she asked conversationally, "do you know anyone who lives on the shore? A fisherman, or...?" she trailed off.

Ron's teeth ground together as his muscles knotted, but he managed, "Na.. na... Nana Possible... Kim's grandma... She lives in Florida... Chez... Leisure... in..."

She chuckled, "Keeping it in the family, hmm? Perfect. I suspect I know the location well."

"What's... happening... to me?" Ron managed to ask through gritted teeth, shaking as though afflicted with a palsy.

"Shh," M.P. soothed. "Relax. Your ride will be here soon."

"Ride?"

"You must return to the surface for a time. But fear not; you will come back to me. We are linked, you and I. Now and forever."

At any other time, Ron would have reacted to those words - either with confusion, fear, or distress. But here and now, with the fire she'd unleashed burning in his veins, the quivering that afflicted his limbs, and surrounded by the eternal night of the ocean depths, he simply accepted them as simple truth. He still might have reacted as the undercurrents of her words penetrated his mind, but something intangibly changed, and M.P. and her words evaporated into insignificance.

Somewhere in the back of Ron's mind, beyond the layers of civilization and society and evolution, at the most primitive level, something began to gibber in terror. Before culture and logic layered meaning over instinct, the most fundamental tenet of survival was the question of "fight or flight." That instinct remains in even the most civilized, urbane, and cultured of modern humans, and in Ron, it suddenly began to howl.

In the unfathomable darkness, it was impossible to see, but somehow beyond anything tangible, Ron simply _knew_ that something approached - and the terror that ran before it screamed from every lingering primitive instinct he possessed in his body. Despite his disquiet and feelings of illness from whatever M.P. had done to him, the mindless urge to flee seized hold, and he blindly began to thrash about, desperately trying to reach the surface and escape.

A hand gripped his ankle, and just as before, M.P.'s strength was more than enough to hold him captive. "Got to get out of here," Ron whimpered to himself, still thrashing wildly and trying to flee before _it_ could find him.

"Such senses," M.P. breathed in delight, even as she anchored him to the seabed. "You can feel your ride coming even now... You will be marvelous when you return... I knew you held the seeds of greatness within you."

From out of the Stygian night, a pinpoint of green light appeared, shockingly brilliant in the darkness. Ron's eyes, with pupils swelled to their maximum diameter thanks to the enveloping darkness, immediately seized on the change, and though his eyes watered as the light stabbed deeply into his retinas, he couldn't look away.

xxXXxx

In the unfathomed depths of the ocean, the sun's rays never pierce the eternal darkness. The only natural source of light is the infernal glow of volcanic vents.

To the creatures adapted to the conditions of this abyss, eyes as humans think of them are an evolutionary disadvantage. Even those creatures that sense light in order to locate the volcanic vents - and the bacteria, heat, other creatures, and compounds vomited from the heart of the Earth - everything needed to help sustain life in this cold, hostile environment - managed to do so with only the simplest of light-sensing organs rather than with complex, fragile, vulnerable, energy-sapping eyes.

But as the source of the light grew closer, and Ron's eyes began to ache as the light hurt his dark-adapted eyes, he learned what naturalists and the primitive and panicked part of his mind already knew. There was one other source of light in the abyss: bio-luminescence... The light generated by living creatures.

While many reasons existed for such light, ranging from a display to rival a peacock's for gaudiness (and with similar intent), to a signal beacon, the reasons for the generation of the light that was growing ever closer to Ron were far more fundamental. To creatures that sought light to find a volcanic bounty, it served as a lure... Bait. And since those animals needed to sense the smallest variation in the darkness to locate the distant glow of volcanic emissions, the lumens that were being poured into the deep served as the phosphorescent equivalent of a club to the head: a weapon to stun and disorient as specialized and effective in its way as a crab's claw or a jellyfish's venom.

xxXXxx

Ron's thrashing increased as his panic mounted, but he gained no more ground than before as M.P. held tight. As the pinpoint of light grew closer, it was suddenly joined by more, of a multitude of different sizes and intensities that bathed a section of the ocean floor in the first light it had known since it had sunk beneath the waves in a geological upheaval untold eons before. Primal terror compressed his heart and throat, but trapped as he was, he could do little but watch. And as he watched, and the source of the ever growing flock of lights grew closer still, Ron learned to his mounting horror that the lights were not simply lights.

They were eyes.

Ron watched as the mass of glowing eyes approached. His chest heaved as his heart pounded and his lungs pumped like bellows, trying to hyper-oxygenate his burning blood so that his muscles could perform at their peak, to better the chance of escaping from what was coming... But his body's efforts were for naught; he was trapped without even the hope of escape.

His eyes wide and watering, Ron found himself unable to blink or tear his gaze away from what approached. He watched the thing grow closer - and larger. In the light emanating from the eyes, its bulk was partially illuminated, bringing elements of the immense form into view. It was amorphous; appearing as a foetid black iridescence against the backdrop of the lesser darkness of the Stygian abyss. In the shapeless congerie of protoplasmic bubbles that was the creature's body, the sickly glow from the myriad of eyes allowed Ron to see the way eyes continually sprouted, opened as eyelids were extruded and retracted, and glowed into unholy life as other eyes closed and were reabsorbed back into the formless and viscid body of the thing.

As it drew nearer, it dominated Ron's vision. Although the undulating mass disguised the true size of the creature in a haze of wrongness as it drifted and oozed over the seabed, Ron's fevered brain began to spit out comparisons, desperately trying to divert itself from contemplation of the nature of the thing that loomed ever larger. It dwarfed the robot Dr. Drakken had once turned Nakasumi-san's Z-Boy production line into... It was larger than Duff Killagan's blimp... It was bigger than Junior's sunlamp... It was huger than Pop Pop Porter's Cryolater... It was even larger than Aviarius' Flamingo of Doom... And the mouth that stretched across the amorphous flank looked massive enough to swallow the Middleton Bueno Nacho in one massive bite.

_"Sick and wrong! Sick and wrong!"_ some fragment of Ron's mind chattered as his eyes were confronted with a horror that even his limited schooling knew should not exist... and before now would have insisted _could not_ exist. Ron panted, close to hyperventilating as his eyes widened further and further, as it continued to loom ever closer...

As Ron stared, frozen in terror, his ears began to resound with the distant echoes of a mocking, eldritch cry. "Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!" the creature called as it came, the cry coming louder and louder as it drew ever nearer.

Dread crystallized in Ron's soul as he realized that it was not simply an abomination - an affront to nature, and all that was good and normal in the world. It was also a _thinking_ creature; a monstrosity as alien to life as Ron knew it as any of the beings found in Area 51 - or even more so, given his experiences there - and possessed of a malignant intelligence. Its call resounded with a vile delight, a ghastly and diabolical eagerness unknown even in the blackened heart of the most execrable of men.

Ron began to laugh maniacally, his mind shuddering away from the thing that should not exist outside the dreams of madmen. Gibbering in wild panic, he turned on M.P. - who still held him captive by the ankle.

His blunt fingers scrabbled fruitlessly across her skin, sending him even deeper into a hysterical delirium. In his frenzy, he abandoned all modesty, decency, and seemliness as he clawed at her naked body, falling into a primitive savagery as he fought to flee from the advancing thing with tooth and nail.

Despite the frenzied assault, his fingers found no purchase, and his nails slid uselessly over flesh that seemed unnaturally firm and resistant to damage. And, just as her skin failed to yield to his attacks, neither did her hand yield in its grip on his ankle.

M.P. crooned to Ron gently, her voice a gentle ululation as she tried to soothe her increasingly wild captive, but as the creature grew ever closer, and that mocking cry grew louder, Ron became uncontrollable. His body twisted and contorted, muscles and sinews straining against each other as he tried to flee... to no avail. He gnashed his teeth and kicked with his free leg, tearing the fabric of his boxer shorts and splitting a seam in his shirt as he wrenched his body about in manic furor, but still he remained trapped.

Ron fought his captivity not with the Mystical Monkey Power, nor any of the martial arts skills he'd acquired over the course of his association with Kim Possible, nor anything else he'd _learned_; he was beyond all thought or reason. He fought with the savagery and raw intensity of an animal in a trap, driven by primal instincts to flee no matter the cost... before _it_ arrived.

When he failed to loosen M.P.'s grip to enable his escape, the maddened animal Ron had become turned his assault upon his own pinned leg. He clawed wildly, his fingernails raking his flesh and releasing a fine haze of blood-mist into the water as mad laughter convulsed through his body. Before M.P. could react to the assault, or he could seriously damage his leg, the creature loomed over the pair of them, the mass of eyes blinking randomly in the seething darkness of its gelid form - and all of them gazing intently at the pair hovering above the seabed.

It was too much. Stressed beyond all measure, bathed in the febrile glow of the creature's multitudinous eyes, the last vestiges of Ron's mind surrendered to the darkness, sinking into the merciful embrace of unconsciousness even as his body began to drift gently down towards the ocean's floor.

xxXXxx

**To be continued...**


	5. I've Been SearchingFor A Boy Like You

**Notes :** Here's my answers to a couple reviews I've gotten so far, though I've learned brevity is a virtue in these notes, so I'm not saying much: The creature in Part 4 was a Shoggoth (not that this tells readers without experience with Lovecraft's stories much, but still...). Also, "M.P." could actually be either one of two individuals - although both candidates are related. At this point, I'll just leave it at that.

Enjoy, and R&R!

* * *

xxXXxx

**Chapter 5: I've Been Searching... For A Boy Like You...**

Kim wiped the tears roughly from her cheeks and forced herself to sit up straight in the pod's chair. "I don't have time for tears," she mumbled, watching the Kimmunicator closely for any indication of a connection. "_Ron_ doesn't have time for this..."

"Come on... come on..." she pleaded. Finally, as her escape pod drifted ever nearer the surface, her impatience was finally rewarded as the animation on the screen was replaced by tiny lettering saying, "Connected..."

"How'd it go, Kim?" Wade asked as he appeared on the screen. He paused to sip from the bendy straw of a disposable Bueno Nacho cup before continuing. "I picked up signs of an underwater explosion from a seismic monitoring station on Oahu, so I'd say things went..." he trailed off as he noticed her reddened eyes, dampened cheeks, and blotchy complexion. As he set aside his soda, he asked, "Are you crying? What's wrong? What happened?"

"Tell GJ we need a SAR Op here ASAP," Kim ordered, sniffling briefly as she scrubbed her cheeks with the back of one hand.

Rufus nodded his agreement emphatically from his perch atop her shoulder, "Uh-huh, uh-huh." he chittered.

Wade's fingers typed furiously on a keyboard for a few seconds. "Done," he nodded. "I'll have an ETA for time-on-site in a few minutes - once the hoverjets are scrambled." He leaned forward, his image growing larger on the screen. "Seriously, Kim; are you okay? Where's Ron?"

A tear slowly trickled down one already dampened cheek, but she ignored it. "Gemini escaped and triggered the self-destruct on the base. The nature and range of his escape craft is unknown," she continued with the barest hint of a quaver in her voice, despite the dry, formal language she was using, as she went through the debriefing to bring Wade up to speed.

Even as he updated the incident report for Global Justice, Wade cautiously asked, "Kim?"

Ignoring Wade's question, Kim continued, "Based on previous encounters, we have an estimated 23 - that's two-three - hostiles in a mix of escape pods and scuba gear, that will need to be collected and secured from near this vicinity. There is a high probability of injury, nitrogen narcosis and-or decompression sickness, so medical personnel and any nearby emergency units, especially those with a hyperbaric capability should be put on immediate stand by."

"Kim? Rufus?" Wade asked, glancing between the two of them, even as he continued to type out the report, looking more and more nervous. "Where's Ron?"

Kim turned her head so Wade couldn't see her face, and simply continued to give orders, "We need to coordinate an expanding concentric search pattern centered on the remains of the WEE base with the goal of search and rescue, and also criminal apprehension. Given the unknown nature of Gemini's escape vehicle, he has likely fled the vicinity, but his henchmen are likely to still be in the area."

Rufus met Wade's eyes and slowly shook his head from side to side, whimpering pitifully.

Wade's eyes widened as his hands stilled on the keyboard, so great was his shock. "Kim? Do you know for sure, is Ron...?"

"He's fine! I know he is. He has to be... We just need to find him!" Kim announced grimly.

"Of course," Wade soothed, quietly adding the priority code for "Agent MIA, in need of assistance" to the sitrep before sending it off to the GJ operational server for processing. He checked a number of monitors, and waited impatiently for updates, hitting the "Enter" key on one of his keyboards every few seconds to force an update to the screen.

"What's the ETA, Wade?" Kim asked.

"GJ hoverjets are launching from bases in Tokyo, Honolulu and Sydney," Wade answered, double checking the times and distances displayed on his monitor and calling up a link to the "Jane's All the World's Police Aircraft" website to double check the aircraft's top speed. "Earliest estimated time on site... less than twenty minutes."

"That's not good enough!" Kim snapped, her voice cracking. "Ron..." she began, then fell silent, squeezing her eyes shut in an attempt to stem the fresh flood of tears that threatened to erupt. "Wade, we have to hurry," she quietly finished, tacitly acknowledging the situation was more dire that she wanted to openly admit.

"I know," he agreed, the tip of his tongue poking from between his lips as he typed furiously. After a minute, he reached up to turn one of his secondary monitors to get a better view of the information displayed on the screen. "Okay, there's a US Navy detachment in the area returning from a tour of duty as part of Operation Unified Assistance. I'm sending a request for aid and the preliminary incident report to the admiral in charge of the task force."

Kim held her breath, staring into the monitor as she watched Wade type. Hoping and praying...

"Confirmed!" Wade grinned, "part of the fleet is diverting to assist in rescue operations."

Releasing her breath in a massive exhalation, Kim smiled, and for the first time, her face revealed a hint of relief. "Thanks, Wade; I don't know what I'd do without..." she fell silent before she could complete the sentence, and the moment of relief vanished from her expression as quickly as it had appeared.

"I know, Kim. I know," he breathed. "Try not to worry; I'll keep you up to date as news comes in."

Kim nodded, a grimace that she had intended to be a smile briefly crossing her face as the Kimmunicator's video screen powered down. She sat back to wait for her pod to reach the surface, mentally ticking off every second that passed as she tried not to think about what might have happened to Ron - or could be happening to him even now.

xxXXxx

The inside of the escape pod briefly flooded with light as it breached the surface. Kim shaded her eyes even as the pitching of the ovoid capsule submerged the small window in the vessel once more, sending the passengers back into darkness.

The familiar tones of the Kimmunicator caroled as the pod began to rock and sway with the motion of the ocean's waves as it bobbed up and down. "Go Wade," Kim announced. She had used the enforced waiting time while the craft slowly surfaced to regain a semblance of her composure, and her tears had dried.

Wade didn't comment on her composure (largely in hopes of helping her maintain it), or the reddened eyes that were the legacy of her tears; he simply brought her up to date on the rescue efforts, trying to be as calm, concise, and informative as possible. "The US Navy and GJ are cooperating in the search, but so far there's no sign of Ron. I've flagged your pod for retrieval, so hold tight..."

A solid thump from over Kim's head, and a brief jerk as the escape pod was forced partially underwater immediately followed his words. "What was that?" she asked.

"It's easier to collect the pods and move them to the collection point than to try to rescue the passengers at sea," Wade explained. "GJ hoverjets pick them up - yours, in this case - with a magnetic grappler, then deposit them on the deck of the carrier - amphibious assault ship, I should say." He paused to check one of his screens, then said, "You should be lifting right about..." he grinned briefly, "Now." With a lurch, Kim's pod rose from the ocean's surface, bobbing and swaying at the end of a cable and spinning slowly about as it rose into the air, trailing a cascade of water in its wake.

As her pod slowly rotated as the GJ hoverjet ferried her escape pod to the waiting rescue ship, Kim watched as best she could through the small window inset in the pressurized door, seeing a number of helicopters circling the seas, intermixed with the dark purple and black wedge shapes of hovering Global Justice aircraft. Rufus' head spun slowly about as he tried to watch everything at once as the pod rotated, until he finally fell over backwards, landing in Kim's lap with his eyes spinning. "Whoa," the naked mole rat stammered.

"Easy, Rufus," Kim soothed, stroking his protuberant pink belly with one hand as she watched a ship grow larger and larger each time the pod rotated enough to bring it into view. "Wade? How's the search going? Anything we can do?"

"They're doing the best they can, Kim," Wade informed her. "And they're trained to do this kind of thing. I'm working on something to look for Ron specifically if the conventional search doesn't work out, but it's complicated; I'll let you know if my idea pans out."

"Thanks, Wade. You continue to rock," Kim smiled sadly, the expression not reaching her eyes.

"Hang in there, Kim. We'll find him," Wade promised. His image flickered off as the pod was slowly lowered down onto the broad deck.

The jolt as the escape pod landed on the deck was minimal, but the scraping sound as the magnetic grappler disconnected and was retracted was very loud. Kim slowly breathed out, centering herself, as the door seal broke with a muted hiss and the pod's door slowly retracted.

Kim climbed out of the escape vehicle with the assistance of a pair of Marines. She absently noted her pod was one of a dozen or more that had been collected on the rear quarter of the ship. _"I guess they've had some practice at the recovery procedure; no wonder that lift was so smooth."_ The guards politely gestured, and she obediently fell into step between them.

Her escort led her past a dispirited collection of henchmen in red and white uniforms sitting forlornly under the watchful eyes of heavily armed Marines while white-garbed medical personnel circulated among them, treating minor injuries. Kim's eyes narrowed as she frowned at them, and the ones who noticed her attention flinched.

A few of the prisoners were sodden; either from the escape from the base, or a later attempt to elude the rescuers. The Greek letters emblazoned on the chests of those prisoners were running - the seawater had leeched the dye so that the character smeared almost to illegibility. The sorry state of their uniforms matched the expression on all of their faces as they contemplated their future under the watchful eyes of the guards.

Kim turned away from the prisoners as she entered the superstructure of the vessel, and after climbing some stairs and wending her way through a few rooms, found herself in an operations center. She halted just inside the door, not wanting to interfere with any of the operators who were busily talking to the pilots searching the ocean, or monitoring the banks of sensors and scanners.

"Miss Possible?"

"Yes?" Kim asked, looking around for the source of the voice.

"Welcome aboard, ma'am. The admiral sends his compliments. I'm Captain Richards."

Kim smiled, and politely shook the extended hand. "Thank you for the assistance, Captain," she replied, her voice a little rough from breathing the oxygen-rich air of the escape capsule. "I passed your other 'guests' on the way. Do we have a tally on the rescue operation?"

"We've collected twenty-one so far. No officers, or at least none that are apparent; all were wearing the same uniform. If the briefing report this..." he paused to check a clipboard before continuing, "Wade Load sent us is accurate, we're still looking for a 'Gamma' and a 'Xi,' in addition to your partner and the 'mastermind' of the operation. We've got descriptions of him and your partner from one of the Global Justice agents on the scene, and of the missing men from the base based on preliminary interviews with the prisoners, so we've got a handle on the rest of the rescue operations.

"I understand you've met this 'Gemini' personally Miss Possible, correct?" the captain asked. At her nod, he continued, "Good; the description we have is somewhat generic - height, weight, hair color, and so on. I've sent a request to Global Justice HQ for more information on the leader of this... 'Whee' group, just in case he's trying to disguise himself as a common trooper, but we haven't received a response back yet."

"Gemini's pretty unique - and I didn't see him in the group I passed. Frankly, I'm surprised the description was so poor - but I can definitely help you with that, at least," Kim stated. Drawing the Kimmunicator from her pocket, she paged Wade, asking, "Can you bring up Gemini's file, Wade? The Captain has some concerns," when the monitor came to life.

Wade tapped a few keys, then reached behind him to flip a large toggle. "I can do better than that." From the red emitter near the top of the Kimmunicator, a hazy spray of light glowed into existence. As the emitter pulsed, a holographic image of Gemini crackled into life on the bridge of the vessel, the image frozen in time, showing the one-eyed villain in the act of raising his prosthetic hand to attack, as large as life.

"Meet Sheldon Director," Kim grinned, impressed as always by Wade's genius, and glad of the distraction as she gestured to the hologram. "AKA 'Gemini,' leader of the Worldwide Evil Empire. AKA Castor Nygma Pollux, AKA ... well, you get the idea. Last time I looked, I think he had about 30 or 40 aliases. His right hand is a cyber-robotic prosthetic, and contains a battery of missile launchers with a variety of ordinance, ranging from comical to lethal, and it is also capable of generating an intense electrical discharge. Like I said, he's fairly recognizable."

From his position in a side pocket of her cargo pants, Rufus chimed in, "Gemini. Un huh."

A strip of paper slowly emerged from the back of the Kimmunicator, the narrow ribbon lengthening until it dragged on the ground. "Here's his full rap sheet, Captain," Wade announced.

The captain accepted the printout as Kim tore it free and handed it to him. He glanced over the form, but his attention was mostly riveted to the hologram, which remained fairly stable even as Kim moved the Kimmunicator and set it on top of a nearby console. "Interesting; I didn't know the state of the art in holographics had advanced this far."

The image crackled, then faded into deresolution. "It hasn't," Wade confessed, "There's still more than a few bugs. It's still a useful feature, however."

Struck by a thought, Kim interrupted. "If Gemini's description was that poor... What kind of a description do you have for Ron? My partner," she queried.

Glancing at the clipboard, the captain casually read, "Height... weight... blonde hair, brown eyes, general air of buffoonery, vapid expression..."

"Vap..." Kim gritted her teeth and demanded, "And just who **exactly** gave you this... 'description' of Ron, Captain?"

The captain blinked curiously. "Like I said; one of the Global Justice operatives on the scene." He ran his finger across the clipboard, then added, "An agent... Du."

Kim's fragile control on her composure cracked. "You can tell Agent Will Du to take his vapid..." She visibly struggled to control herself, then finally bit out, "The only reason I'm here, and not with Ron right now, is because he pushed me into the only remaining escape pod and hit the launch button. So be sure to question _Agent Du_ as to whether someone who would do _that_, or someone who didn't even think to mention the one eye and prosthetic hand when giving a description of Gemini, is closer to an 'air of buffoonery.'" With that, she stormed out, with Rufus' loud raspberry accompanying her.

The captain blinked as he watched her retreat. "Interesting," he noted.

"Very," Wade's voice piped from the Kimmunicator. "She didn't mention that before."

An apologetic half-smile graced the captain's face. "I have to admit, I didn't think to question the description. I'd seen her partner in some of the news reports about their exploits, and well, frankly, it seemed to fit with what I remembered."

"Ron has... hidden depths," Wade explained. "But that can wait. Tell me captain, do you have an ASW buoy handy?"

"Active, passive, sonic, electronic, acoustic...?" the captain trailed off, his expression curious.

"Active and electronic," Wade clarified. "I have an idea how to help locate Ron - but it will only work for Ron. If you connect the Kimmunicator to the buoy, I should be able to reconfigure it."

Weighing the Kimmunicator in his hand as he picked it up, Captain Richards asked curiously, "What did you have in mind?"

xxXXxx

Kim scowled as she brusquely stomped past the prisoners once more. She cast a dubious eye across the motley lot, checking each one over, but as she had suspected, none was Gemini in disguise.

It was a trifle amusing the way the men flinched away from her when they were all much older, larger, and stronger, but it did nothing to dispel her foul mood. _"I can't believe Will would still be like this..."_ she shook her head in disbelief as she walked away from the captives, the low growl emanating from her pants pocket showing that Rufus shared her opinions.

She found a spot out of the way of flight operations that still allowed her to look out over the ocean. She watched the hoverjets and helicopters circling as smaller boats and hovercraft trolled the surface, searching for the last few remaining missing men. _"Ron..."_

xxXXxx

"Can you tell me just what it is that you're doing?" Captain Richards asked as he watched the telescoping probe that had sprouted from the blue-green device twitch from inside the depths of the buoy.

"I'm reconfiguring it to search a specific frequency for a return," Wade explained. "By narrowing the focus, I can also increase the power and range of the buoy's transmitter - which will help."

"So Ron had a device like this... 'Kimmunicator' on him that you can track?" the Captain asked curiously.

"No, this isn't going to look for a Kimmunicator," Wade replied, but didn't explain what it _was_ looking for. "Even if he did have one, he'd have probably lost it by now. Anyway, once I'm done modifying this, it should be able to find him anywhere in the area. The problem would be if..."

"The dropoff to the west?" the captain noted, glancing at a topographical overlay of the local ocean floor that had been taped onto a nearby wall.

"Exactly. That sea cliff is steep, and even with my modifications, I don't think the buoy's signal would be able to penetrate that depth. But even if Ron _were_ that deep..."

"It wouldn't be a rescue, it would be a recovery," the captain agreed.

"Yeah," Wade fell silent, and for a time, only the clacking of his keystrokes as he typed were heard.

xxXXxx

Kim watched the controlled confusion of the search efforts as the sun sank ever lower in the sky. She felt a little ashamed of her outburst, but didn't really regret it. _"Oh, Ron,"_ she thought darkly. _"How am I going to tell his folks?"_ she wondered as her mood darkened.

A swirl of activity, and the rapid approach of a small Zodiac cutting across the center of the search area (contrary to the usual movement of the search pattern) caught her attention. "What's going on?" Kim wondered aloud.

"Begging your pardon, ma'am," a Marine interrupted her. As she turned to face him, he explained, "The captain thought you should know - we've found someone who matches the description of your friend. He's being brought in now, and the captain thought you might like to meet him."

The swell of emotion that rolled through her was staggering. "Yes, please," Kim smiled, and the surge of hope that filled her was nearly blinding.

She followed the Marine to a docking station, where the Zodiac she had noticed previously was clearly bound. Kim stared at the craft as she waited impatiently, trying to see into it, but aside from the presence of a supine form surrounded by the wetsuited figures of the search party, she couldn't make out any details.

As the Zodiac was lifted onto the platform, Kim felt her heart race. The figure in the bottom of the craft, although still obscured, was clearly wearing Ron's wetsuit.

Barely able to restrain herself, Kim impatiently waited as the raft was hauled onto the platform and locked into place. As soon as the men aboard began to disembark, she forced her way through the press of bodies to kneel beside the prone figure.

Kim's heart immediately sank. "It's not Ron," she said aloud. Even though the transparent breath mask feeding him oxygen was fogged from respiration and condensation, obscuring his features, she knew it wasn't Ron.

Rufus emphatically nodded his agreement as he peered out of her pocket, his tiny claws gripping the fabric of her pants. "Not Ron. Not Ron."

She stepped back and watched as the medical personnel went to work, removing Ron's wetsuit from the small man. As they worked, she noticed something. "Wait - why are there two scuba tanks?" she asked one of the frogmen who had come in with the Zodiac.

"Can't say, ma'am," he answered. "He had both tanks with him when we found him."

Kim's heart sank even more. She watched the medical team cut the wetsuit from his body, revealing the pair of red and white pants that were far too large for the man's slight frame, that he had nonetheless worn beneath Ron's wetsuit.

Scowling, Kim knew she could at least unravel one of the mysteries. "Check his pockets," Kim ordered. "He'll have a ring in one."

"Please stay back. He needs to be prepped for a flight to the mainland," one of the doctors working on him protested even as he secured the man's limp arm to a backboard. "He's got the bends."

"Do it!" she barked, seething. There was no earthly reason for the man to have taken both Ron's and her own scuba tanks when he fled from the undersea base, but because he'd done so, he'd also eliminated two of Ron's few potential routes to safety - and the one she'd been most hopeful that he would have been able to reach.

Rather than waste time arguing, the man simply complied when he had finished securing the limb, and handed over the plain gold band he found before returning to his work. Kim held the ring up to the light, and as she expected, she saw the almost invisible circuitry that lined the interior - as well as the HenchCo logo.

Kim gave the ring to the Marine who had lead her to the docking platform. "It's a HenchCo muscle ring. Instant perfect physique. The captain should confiscate any that are on the other captives as well. It's not exactly a weapon, but it does give the wearer unnatural strength."

The Marine eyed the ring curiously. He made a move as if to put it on, but Kim stopped him.

"Check those pants," she instructed, pointing to the prone figure that was being prepped for his flight. "Unless you want to grow that much bigger, I wouldn't put it on. He couldn't fit in Ron's wetsuit while wearing it, so he must have taken off his ring so he could fit into it; you can see the difference that made." And the difference between the pants - even cinched closed as they were by a massively tightened belt - and his unimproved waist was indeed obvious.

Kim watched the team hustle the backboard the WEE henchman had been strapped to up to the flight deck for his trip to a decompression chamber, followed by her erstwhile escort, still eyeing the ring he held in one palm. She watched the frogmen launch the Zodiac again to return to the search, then dispiritedly climbed the stairs back up to the operations deck.

As she passed the captives once more, it was clear the guards had taken her instructions to heart. More than one potbelly was now in evidence, and rather than looking like a slumming Olympic weightlifting team, the sullen henchmen looked a lot less threatening - and even more dispirited.

Not even bothering to see if they would react to her presence again, Kim ignored the captives. She returned to her silent vigil, watching the ongoing search and rescue operations. Rufus moved about, trying to find a comfortable position in the unfamiliar pocket, but soon settled down.

The nearly silent landing and later vertical takeoff of a Global Justice hoverjet as it collected the WEE henchman suffering from decompression sickness she let pass without comment. She simply watched it go as it shrank into the distance.

Kim scowled ferociously as her mood darkened still further, her head turning to follow the course of the hoverjet's retreat - and that of the injured henchman it contained. As she watched, she tried to think of a possible way - _any_ possible way - that Ron could have escaped from the self-destructing base without the aid of their own equipment, or the missing escape pods, and kept drawing a blank. _"He has to have survived. Somehow,"_ she tried to convince herself, but her mood remained grim.

xxXXxx

"Done!" Wade breathed a sigh of relief as the probes and connections withdrew from the casing of the buoy and retracted back into the Kimmunicator. The screen on the device briefly flashed as it broadcast a subsonic signal, and the buoy's case obediently closed, sealing the interior inside the protective shell.

"Good," the captain acknowledged. "It will be dark soon, and SAR operations in the dark are a lot more challenging than daylight operations."

"Launch the buoy near the center of the search area, please, and I'll be able to monitor the returns through the Kimmunicator," Wade instructed. "If Ron's anywhere nearby, we'll know."

Left unmentioned was what no response would mean - either Ron was out of range (and consequently unrecoverable), or the chip the buoy was modified to detect had been damaged severely enough to be unresponsive. And since the chip was embedded in Ron's neck... Wade didn't want to think about either outcome.

The captain gestured, and an orderly obediently carried the buoy towards the flight deck. "Three more people to find," he noted, mostly to himself, as he turned to look out an observation window at the deck of his vessel, and the ongoing search mission beyond. "And most likely only two. At this point, I think we have to concede that 'Gemini' has escaped."

"How's Kim doing?" Wade asked. "I was sorry to hear it wasn't Ron you found."

"As well as can be expected," the captain answered. "I thought it best to leave her in peace; my men are keeping a discrete eye on her, though."

Wade remained silent as the captain read a report an ensign handed him. As the captain shook his head in dismay, Wade raised a curious eyebrow as he took a sip of soda.

"Wade?" the captain asked carefully as he handed the report back to the waiting ensign. "Do you know Ron's shoe size?"

"I don't know offhand; I can find out." He raised a confused eyebrow. "Why?"

"The divers have recovered... A part of... It's... Well, to be blunt, we found a leg," the captain finished somewhat awkwardly, mindful of the boy's actual age, despite his mental maturity. "Human, left, from mid-thigh down. It's approximately the right size for a male of Ron's general height, and from the lack of decomposition, and the lack of clothing, the most likely..."

"I'll see if the Middleton Medical Center has his baby footprints on file for comparison," Wade interrupted as his fingers blurred on a keyboard. "In the meantime, please launch that buoy. But..." he fell silent, then eventually added, "Let's... not mention this to Kim until we know for sure."

"Agreed," the captain nodded grimly.

xxXXxx

As the sun sank beneath the waves, the small craft and helicopters slowly returned to their home berths. Kim watched the GJ hoverjets land one by one atop the assault carrier briefly to refuel, and to collect the WEE prisoners. When they took off, they retreated into the distance rather than returning to station over the surrounding ocean.

In the dying light, Kim slowly returned to the operations room, barely noticing the Marine that shadowed her. As she entered, she overheard Wade talking to the captain.

"... there's been no sign of a contact from the buoy, and if he was within a hundred miles of here - within a survivable ocean depth, anyway - there would have been _something_. Either his body went over that cliff, or the base explosion... What did the autopsy on that leg they recovered determine?"

"It was bitten off," the captain said bluntly, and concisely. "But the doctor think it could have been postmortem. We can hope, anyway. No word yet on the baby prints?"

"Not yet; records as old as R... Kim!" Wade interrupted himself as he noticed the new arrival.

The captain visibly straightened his posture as his face assumed a comforting and professional mein. "Miss Possible; good. Dr. Director has arranged a flight home for you."

Kim nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

"I've sent the information about how to monitor the buoy returns, Captain," Wade added. "The battery should be good for a few more hours yet. If you find anything at all, please contact GJ immediately; they know how to get hold of me. Thank you for all the help."

"Glad to," Captain Richards answered. "Hopefully we'll have some better news for you."

"Thank you, Captain," Kim replied, but it was clear from her voice that she didn't retain much hope. "Sorry I haven't been a... better guest."

"It's perfectly understandable," the captain smiled understandingly, his expression sympathetic.

"If you'll follow me, ma'am?" the Marine who had been shadowing Kim prompted.

Kim nodded, and pocketed the Kimmunicator as Wade broke the connection. She followed the Marine back down to the flight deck, and to the hoverjet that awaited her.

As she strapped herself into one of the passenger seats, she vaguely wondered if the choice of someone _other_ than Will Du as her pilot was deliberate, but she decided she didn't really care. She was simply grateful that she didn't have to face him - yet. _"He should be grateful for that, too."_

Once Kim was seated and settled, the pilot, a woman wearing sunglasses (that Kim suspected were just as gimmicked as the ones Wade had once made for her), lifted into the air with a roar from the engines. The pilot seemed disinclined to talk, another fact Kim was grateful for.

Kim settled in for the long flight home, trying to think of what she could possibly say to Ron's folks that would make the news she had to deliver any easier. _"Ron's a hero, but that will be cold comfort at best."_

xxXXxx

On the far side of the world, a police dispatcher answered a call. "911 Emergency; how can we assist you?"

"I'm sorry to bother you," a faded but still energetic voice answered, "and I don't know if it's an emergency but..."

"How can we help you, ma'am?" the dispatcher patiently prompted.

"I hate to be a burden," the woman continued, "but the dogs are going crazy around here. They're barking up a storm, and even my Miss Purrsworth is hissing something awful. I live alone, and I'm afraid..."

"Not to worry, ma'am," the dispatcher soothed the elderly caller as she double checked the address that had automatically appeared on her screen when the call was routed to her, then began typing an incident report. "There's a patrol car in the area, and we're sending it to investigate."

"Oh, thank you. I don't like to make a fuss, but they've been barking, and barking, and barking for over an hour now - even Mr. McCaffery's little Puggsly is making a frightful racket, and he's just the sweetest little thing you've ever seen. He wouldn't bark at a fly..."

**XXXxxxXXX**

**To be continued...**


	6. What'cha Gonna Do When They Come For You

xxXXxx

**Chapter 6: What'cha Gonna Do When They Come For You?**

The first thing that Officer Johnson noticed when he climbed out of his patrol car was the smell. "Holy..." he began, then shuddered in disgust. "Did something die?" he asked his partner, gagging slightly as he shielded his nose with his forearm.

The older policeman's bushy mustache writhed beneath his nose, but he didn't show any other visible reaction to the foul scent as he swung his car door shut with a muffled thump. "That's not decomp," was all he said.

"Are you sure?" Johnson asked. "We're right on a canal here," he added, as he pointed to the nearby water for emphasis, "if a floater washed ashore it'd explain the... the... odor," Johnson continued.

"I'm sure. You can't mistake it for anything else. This isn't it," the older, more experienced Murphy explained.

Johnson shrugged. "It's definitely _something_, though," he said unnecessarily, wincing again as he unintentionally breathed too deeply.

"Yep," Murphy agreed laconically.

Shading his eyes, Johnson looked up and down the street. It was peaceful, well-kept, orderly, and as he had noted previously, it also paralleled an offshoot of a minor tributary that only gross exaggeration could describe as a river which flowed from the far distant Everglades and emptied into the Atlantic. The street was all but indistinguishable from the thousands of similar streets that could be found in the innumerable communities along the Florida coast; all looked normal. The only irregularities to be found were the smell, and the muffled sound of dogs barking continuously and vigorously from some of the houses. "I hear what Mrs... Baker was it? meant," he noted.

"Yep," Murphy agreed again, his mustache crinkling as he smiled briefly in amusement.

"Anyone ever tell you that you talk too much?" Johnson jibed.

"Yep," Murphy might have smirked beneath the cover of the mustache - the skin around his eyes definitely wrinkled, in any case. "I don't know what that smell is, but five will get you ten it's what's got the dogs in an uproar."

"I was afraid you were going to say that," Johnson groaned, then theatrically sniffed the air. Wincing, he pointed west, further down the road, and nearer the canal. "Whatever it is, it smells like it's coming from down yonder."

Murphy hitched up his gunbelt as Johnson spoke into the shoulder mounted handset of his police radio, telling the dispatcher they were moving away from their vehicle. As the reply from the central station crackled from their receivers, acknowledging their report, the pair strode westward along the shoulder of the road.

As they walked past a small, pale yellow house, the yipping barks of a terrier fenced in the front yard were striking in both their intensity, and their ferocity. The tiny canine was snarling and yelping with a viciousness far beyond anything his small size or the name "Precious" painted on the front of his doghouse (which had been built to mirror the construction of the owner's home in miniature), could possibly imply. As they passed the house, both officers noted the canine was facing the same direction the officers were walking, and was more exact and persistent in his orientation than even the finest, best bred hunting dog.

"Interesting," Murphy noted, but didn't elaborate as they continued on. Johnson nodded his agreement, but remained mute.

From the upper window of faded green house, the sound of a TV or radio could be heard. "The Pentagon has now confirmed that elements of the US Navy continue to assist in the search for a missing member of Team Possible in the South Pacific, following the destruction of an undersea installation. But as time passes without sign of the missing young man, experts fear..." The news report was abruptly cut off as the station was changed, then was changed again, cutting off the throbbing beats of Slipknot. As the officers continued walking, the strains of Glenn Miller's orchestra playing "In the Mood" faded behind them.

The pair passed another dozen homes, and as they approached a curve in the road, the deeper growls of a blunt-faced bulldog on the far side of the street filled their ears. "You see that?" Johnson queried.

Murphy nodded. He had noticed the direction of the bulldog's focus as well. Instead of facing west as the terrier had been, he was looking towards the officers - and towards the canal they had been paralleling as they walked along the roadside.

Without exchanging a word, both men flicked open the security strap that secured their sidearm into its holster, though neither drew his firearm. With a nod of acknowledgement, Johnson led the way down through the yard of a white cottage, following the grade of the embankment as it sloped gently down from the suburban road moving towards the gently rippling canal they could see behind the property.

"Whew," Johnson exhaled heavily, and covered his nose with the back of one hand as the wind shifted and a gust redolent of something deeply foul blew over him. Even the normally unflappable Murphy missed a step as the eye-watering aroma abruptly leaped in intensity.

"What _is_ that?" Johnson asked rhetorically.

"Dunno," Murphy replied as his brow furrowed.

Neither man said anything else as they continued on. The scent was intense enough to leave an aftertaste on the tongue, and neither wanted to face it any more than they absolutely had to.

The policemen were now near enough to the canal to hear the small splashes and evanescent trickling of the water as it meandered lazily along its course. It was nearly loud enough to drown out the small groan that came from nearby - but only nearly.

Johnson and Murphy cautiously followed the small sounds and the smell, and soon found the source of both. "Dang," Officer Johnson observed, shielding his nose again as he looked down on their discovery.

Lying on the bank of the canal, in the center of a patch of well manicured grass that was lying flat on the turf - weighted down by an iridescent black, viscous fluid, was a teenage boy. His gender was immediately apparent since he was mostly naked - entirely so from the waist down (aside from some black rubber slippers), and the same slimy goo that coated the swath of grass also covered him.

"Check his pulse," Murphy instructed, quietly radioing in their discovery. From the small movements as he twitched uneasily in either sleep or unconsciousness, and the groans and moans he periodically emitted, it was clear he was alive - if not entirely well. Given the smell, his uneasy rest was unsurprising.

"Strong and steady," Johnson reported, shaking his hand roughly in an attempt to flick away the goo that had been transferred from the boy's neck when he checked the pulse in the throat. "He's probably just drunk."

"Looks like it," Murphy tipped the brim of his hat back as he looked around. Aside from the goo covering the area around the boy, there was no sign of anything else amiss - and the fact that he was the source of the stench that was disturbing the animals was equally obvious. _Eye-wateringly_ obvious, in fact.

Johnson spread and closed the fingers of his hand, and the slime stretched and consolidated with the movements, gleaming with an oily sheen that might have been pretty had it been associated with something less mucous-like - or less odoriferous. Shuddering, he bent to swirl his hand in the gently rolling water of the nearby canal to rinse the goo away. It was surprisingly tenacious in clinging to his fingers, but finally yielded to the water. "What do you suppose he got into?" he wondered aloud, wiping his hand dry on the side of his pants. "This stuff's really nasty - it's almost like someone sneezed."

A sound halfway between a snort and a chuckle emerged from behind Murphy's mustache. "Two will get you five he's from the university. This one's a new one on me, too, but you'd be amazed what kids with a little creativity, a little training, and access to a chem lab can cook up as a prank. Believe it or not, I've smelled worse. He was probably drinking with his buddies, and they decided to have a little fun with him when he passed out. I'm just glad he's not premed. Jokers with cadavers..." he shook his head. "I'd rather deal with a bad smell."

With a chuckle, Johnson agreed. "Bet there are polaroids of this waiting in his dorm room, too." He glanced down at the teen, and though his "sleep" wasn't restful, he didn't truly appear to be in distress. "So what do we do with sleeping beauty?"

"You haven't worked a spring break yet, have you?" Murphy reminded himself. "This will be good training. We get a few like this boyo every year. Not so many as some of the other precincts - we've got too many retirement communities and residential areas and not enough hotels and resorts to have the kinds of issues they do down the coast a ways.

"First thing is you go on up to that house," he gestured with his chin, pointing the way, "and see if the owner has a hose we can use - let's try to get him cleaned up a little; I'd rather not be smelling him on the upholstery in the squad car any longer than we have to. I'll bring the car down, and we'll take him in to get processed. We'll get a blood test done at the station to make sure he's not on anything more serious than booze, and let the medicos check him out. He doesn't look like he's OD'd, but it's always best to let 'em make sure he's really okay. After that, we can just let him dry out in a cell. If he's lucky, the judge will let him off with a warning."

Johnson nodded. "Get a sample of the snot before we clean him up?"

Murphy's grin was plain, even through the thatch of his mustache. "Might as well. Let the lab boys figure this one out. It'll be good for the boychick, too - it's a safe bet the judge will take one whiff and decide he's suffered enough."

His partner laughed, and agreed. "Let's do it then." The pair secured their sidearms, and headed back the way they'd come.

xxXXxx

"can you tell me your name?"

"can you tell me where you live?"

"do you know where you are?"

"are you on any prescription medications, or are you under the influence of any illegal drugs?"

"... don't worry; you'll just feel a little prick..."

Ron distantly heard the questions, and felt the sting as a small amount of blood was drawn from the inside of his elbow, but didn't respond. He couldn't remember how. His head felt like it was wrapped in yards of cotton wadding - everything seemed distant; thoughts, emotions, his senses - and he felt a vague sense that he shouldn't awaken the rest of the way - _mustn't_ awaken. _Why_ he felt this way, he neither remembered, nor cared to think about. Words continued to wash over him, but they passed through his ears as unheeded as the slight tug on his skin as something cool was pressed against the skin of his forearm where he'd felt the pinprick.

The voices continued, but Ron didn't heed them. He blinked uncertainly and irregularly, his eyes unfocused and bleary as he just drifted in a hazy "now."

"...vital signs are all stable..."

"...a few contusions, scratches... I've taken pictures..."

"...no, he should be fine..."

"...no sign of track marks, or..."

"...time for the blood..."

Ron was moving. He felt it. He knew it. And it was good. Movement was good. Why, he didn't know - but he knew it was. _"Am I flying?"_ he wondered briefly, then decided it didn't matter. Colors and shapes crawled across his vision; none were clear and none lingered.

Something hard and square was pressed into his hands. His fingers wrapped around rigid metal corners, and his fingertips felt something soft and velvety. The contrast was nice. He liked it.

"...smile at the birdy..."

A sudden flash of light caused Ron to blink his eyes. He felt a surge of adrenaline that caused his heart to pound in his chest as something told him that light in the darkness was a bad, bad, bad, bad thing, but when the flash didn't recur, he just let his head loll as his heartbeat slowly returned to normal.

"he's really out of it... wonder how much he drank?"

He was moving again. Turning. Spinning. And then another flash - to the side. Ron blinked, and he was moving again. And that was better. _"It won't get me if I move,"_ crawled through his mind. It was a disturbing thought, so he banished it. It didn't return. And it was okay.

"...wonder what his buddies dumped on him. He still stinks even after we hosed..."

Ron felt hands on his; manipulating his fingers one by one. A cool sensation on his fingertips, followed by a gentle, but thorough pressure with a coarse, crinkling material. _"That's fun..."_ he decided, and a small smile creased his lips.

"...nice bracelet. Guess we can rule out robbery..."

"... just bag everything. Let's get him dressed..."

Strange hands touched Ron - a sensation he found disturbing, but not enough to force him to breach the pall that covered him. He heard a metallic sound, and he felt amused as the word _"zipper"_ ran through his mind. _"That's a funny word,"_ he decided. _"Zzzzzzipper."_ He realized he liked the word.

"...easy there..."

"...get his legs..."

The faint scent of bleach, and cotton. The acridity of old urine. A faint hum, almost subliminal and subaural. A soft cushion at his back. Soft pressure on the back of his heels. Buoyed by the sensations, Ron's eyes drooped slowly closed, and he gradually faded out.

"... he's out like..."

**XXXxxxXXX**

**To be continued...**


	7. You Look So Precious Now

xxXXxx

**Chapter 7: You Look So Precious Now**

Ron Stoppable awoke with a jerk, his eyes widening and his chest heaving as he strained to fill his lungs with air. He gasped, coughing and heaving as his stomach convulsed. He curled into a fetal ball, barely noticing the rough texture of the blanket lying beneath his cheek. When his breathing slowed, and approached a semblance of normality, his muscles relaxed, and he slumped flat onto his back, panting as he stared up at an unfamiliar ceiling.

_"Where am I?"_ Ron wondered, blinking in surprise. Above him was a featureless grey slab with a recessed light fixture that could only be described as institutional - and secure.

Ron allowed his head to slump to the side, resting his cheek on the coarse blanket beneath him. _"Lovely,"_ he noted, seeing the blank wall a few inches away from his eyes.

With a muffled groan as his head throbbed dully with pain, Ron tilted his head to the other side. _"I'm in jail?"_ Ron thought in wonder, too surprised by the discovery to imbue much emotion into the realization.

Trying not to move his head much, he lowered his eyes, looking down the length of his body. His feet were elevated, and as a result, he had a good view of the high visibility orange jumpsuit he was wearing. A sudden squirm made him realize it was _all_ he was wearing. A brief moment of panic arose as he thought, _"I can't go commando - when I lose my pants, I'll..."_ but it quickly faded with the realization that there were no pants to lose; it was all one piece.

He turned his head, resting his cheek on the blanket again and tried to examine his surroundings without irritating his headache. The cell was plain - bare concrete and steel, painted a grimly monotonous shade of grey on walls, roof, and floor. Three of the walls were featureless concrete, with the wall above his head as he lay on the cot a crosshatching arrangement of thick steel bars. It smelled vaguely of old urine and bleach, particularly from the direction of the lidless, seatless, stainless steel toilet that graced one corner. The small room was clean, but still had as a general atmosphere a sickly miasmic conglomeration he could only describe as "depression" that lingered as a legacy of the many previous tenants. The cot he lay on boasted recently laundered sheets, but the blanket he could see from the corner of his eye as he gazed across the narrow expanse of his room was fading and grey - barely darker than the walls of the cell.

_"Great. Well, at least I'm not manacled to the wall,"_ he noted, trying to look on the bright side. _"It's not like being a prisoner is a new thing..."_ When that thought failed to cheer him, he tried to remember what he was doing here - or how he'd gotten here, or... Well, much of anything else; his mind was sort of hazy, and details were sparse, but an occasional mental image rose before his mind's eye as he sought enlightenment for his current condition.

_"We swam to the base..."_ he remembered, closing his eyes to help him focus and ease his head. _"Gemini hit the self-destruct..."_ Red light. _"Yes... I remember those..."_ Blank wall. _"We were blocked..."_ Pod. One. K.P. _"She's safe... and so is Rufus... Good..."_ He found that thought comforting. And then... _"Running..."_

Ron winced, as a throbbing pain lanced from his temples through his head like a pair of icepicks. A faint, barely audible whimper escaped through his clenched teeth. _"Maybe I'll think about that... later."_

Foregoing his mental excursion, Ron simply lay on the bed, inverted from the normal position, (with his head turned closest to his cell door, and his feet resting atop the cot's pillow) and stared down his orange-clad body at the undecorated wall above his feet, trying to read meaning in the tiny random patterns of convexities and concavities in the surface of the hardened cement. It was an exercise in mind-numbing futility - which he found soothing to his aching head.

The sound of rusting hinges squealing as metal was drawn across metal scraped at Ron's ears as the door to his cell swung open. He winced, but the assault on his hearing was mercifully brief, and his instinctive move to shield his ears halted before his arms had done more than twitch.

Swinging his legs over the edge of the cot, Ron rose unsteadily to his feet, wincing at the stab of pain emanating from the back of his skull as the cool cement underfoot leached heat from his toes. He turned to face the door to his cell while scratching at an itch on the back of his neck, directly above the point of the greatest pain, trying to ready himself to confront whoever had imprisoned him, despite his poor condition. _"Drakken? Maybe Dementor? Gemini's most likely,"_ he realized.

**"RON!"**

Ron blinked, but before he could think or move, he was engulfed by a redhead. He staggered back a pace as she encircled his ribs with a hug that seemed powerful enough to shatter them if she exerted even the slightest additional pressure. His breath exploded from his lungs with a sound that has half a grunt, and half a wheeze. "K.P." he panted. _"She **is** safe,"_ he thought with a moment of climactic relief. _"It worked."_

If anything, Kim's grip only tightened on him at his breathy exhalation of her initials. She tilted her head to the side, resting her cheek on his shoulder as she held him crushingly tight in her embrace; refusing to let go, or to loosen her hold upon him.

Surprised by her vehemence, Ron's arms slowly rose, seemingly of their own volition, and wrapped themselves around her. Kim made a happy little noise, and whispered something, far too quietly for him to hear, but he realized the actual words she spoke didn't matter; her meaning and intent were clear enough that he didn't need to hear them. He knew her so well that he could practically read her mind, even when she was acting strangely - like she was right now.

"Shh," he whispered. "It's okay," he soothed her even as his head throbbed in sympathetic resonance to his heartbeat. One of his arms curved behind her shoulders, letting her know it was there without exerting any real pressure, supporting her as she leaned against him, even as his other hand dipped lower. Splaying his fingers, he rested his hand against the concave warmth of her bare lower back.

Kim seemed to freeze as she felt the touch of his skin against hers. She fell silent, and held herself completely still - but she neither drew back from him, nor made the slightest hint of protest.

Ron made small, comforting circles with his hand across her back, amazed at both his lack of awkwardness, and how natural it felt to hold her in his arms, to touch her like this. _"How can I be doing this? I thought it would be so awkweird,"_ he marvelled, even as his fingertips gloried in the softness of her skin, tracing gentle arcs across the flowing curve of her spine beneath the hem of her mission shirt. _"That feels... nice. She's so soft..."_

He lowered his face until his nose was buried in the flowing mane of her hair. She had obviously come straight to the prison from the scene of the WEE base's destruction, without even a detour to clean up after the mission, but despite this, Ron realized she still smelled wonderful - earthy and natural, with just a hint of the herbal shampoo that she used, overlain with the scent of the salt air of the ocean. Kim rarely used cosmetics or colognes at all - and almost never on a mission - so her scent was simply that of a young, healthy woman glowing with vibrancy and life, while the salt tang clinging to her hair stirred emotions and thoughts in him that he didn't understand.

A sigh of contentment escaped from between Kim's lips. She turned her face, so that instead of facing away from Ron, her face was nestled in the juncture of his shoulder and neck. Her breath tickled as it blew across the skin of his throat, above the collar of his hideous jumpsuit, and he felt a heat rising to suffuse his face.

Licking his lips, Ron felt his heart pound in his chest. He was sure she could feel it as it pulsed, so closely was she pressed against him. It felt oddly familiar, and very natural to have her body against his, though this was completely different than any other embrace they had shared. This was not a simple hug between friends; this was deeper, and more meaningful, and he felt in his bones that this was the start of something that would last a lifetime.

Ron's eyes widened as a moment of clarity trumpeted alarm at what he was doing, and despite the way he was feeling - and what he was feeling - he began to feel a twinge of concern sprouting from somewhere deep inside himself. He was embracing his best friend. He was holding her. His hand was touching her bare back. He was _smelling_ her. And she was doing the same in return, squeezing him and nuzzling his neck. _"What's wrong with me?"_ he thought frantically, his hands stilling on her back as his confusion and panic began to rise, overshadowing the contentment that had been blooming within. _"What's wrong with _her_? This isn't normal!"_

He shifted his hold, raising his hands to Kim's shoulders. As Kim blinked in surprise, he gently pushed her away from him. She was loathe to release him, but her grip on his ribs did slacken, and as he continued to push on her shoulders, she eventually stepped back a pace, her hands sliding along his ribs as she drew back until her arms fell entirely away from his body to lie limply at her sides. "Ron?" she asked curiously.

He looked deeply into her eyes, losing himself in the verdant pools that glimmered with a limpid light as they reflected the harsh glare of the institutional light fixture overhead, transmuting it into a glow that he could only describe as "love." He smiled, and she slowly did the same, her face gaining a transcendent gleam as her emotions shone forth. Ron cradled her face in his hands, his fingers spreading across her cheeks in an embrace more intimate than the one their bodies had shared mere moments before. His concerns evaporated as he drank in the depth and breadth of their connection with every breath he took, and every little sound she made.

Kim sighed happily, and she tilted her head so that one of Ron's palms was cupping her cheek. A contented grin crossed her face - one Ron hadn't seen in years. She was fully and completely happy... and she felt that way in his embrace... and she wasn't afraid to show it. _"Kim..."_

With gentle pressure from his fingertips, Ron drew Kim's beaming face to meet his. He pressed his lips to her forehead, and kissed her gently between her eyebrows - squarely where the first sign of her eventual transformation into a monkey had sprouted. Oddly, the thought didn't disturb him. And for a moment, that realization disturbed him. But then her fluttering eyelashes brushed against his chin like the flickering touch of a butterfly's wings as a faint giggle erupted to dance across Ron's throat, and the discomfort faded as quickly as it had arisen.

Ron's face slowly lifted from hers, and he smiled. Gazing deeply into her eyes, he whispered lovingly, "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah-nagl fhtaga..." Ron smiled as Kim listened without understanding; she simply pulled him back into her embrace.

From over Kim's shoulder, Ron realized the woman he knew as M.P. sat perched on his cell's toilet, her posture and assurance that of a queen seated on a far different sort of throne. _"M.P."_ his eyes widened, and the girl in his arms instantly faded to utter irrelevance.

She smiled from atop her unusual perch, the expression on her face an exact match to K.P.'s own look of pleasure, and she rose from her seat with a grace and ease that Ron both envied and adored. Her naked skin looked pale and sickly against the grim monochrome backdrop of his cell, but he knew it to be the cool green of the ocean's depths, in a shade reflective of the fecundity of spring, and it both excited and pleased him even as he felt Kim's body shifting against his. It was the cell's color that was sick and wrong; M.P.'s skin was perfect, and he realized that he eagerly awaited the day his own would be a match for hers. _"It will come in time,"_ he reassured himself, even as he hugged Kim to his chest.

He basked in the glow of M.P.'s pleasure and approval as she neared. Ron knew he pleased her, and that fact pleased him as well. The aching in his head, as well as all of his uncertainty, vanished as though it had never existed; they were wiped from his existence when his gaze met hers.

Ron lowered his hands to grip Kim's flanks, curving his hands around her slim frame. His thumbs gently began to move, stroking gently along the underside of her ribcage, and Kim happily nuzzled the underside of his jaw with her nose in return.

"Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!" M.P. praised. She smiled at the image of young love Kim and Ron made as they stood snuggled against each other, which made this moment perfect.

Smiling back at the green woman, Ron moved his right hand from Kim's body, while his left hand continued its gentle ministrations. He held his right hand outstretched beseechingly, his palm facing upwards. "Cthulhu fhtagn," he agreed.

Bowing slightly, M.P. placed an ornate dagger crafted of a glittering golden alloy into his open hand, balancing the weight of it across his palm. Stepping back, she straightened her back once more, and beamed proudly at him, her unblinking black eyes alive with an intense hunger.

Ron's hand curved around the hilt of the dagger. _"I know what I have to do."_ Ron's arm tightened around the pallid, inferior mockery of his true love that snuggled against him, ensuring that she couldn't flee.

xxXXxx

Ron's screams echoed through the mostly empty cell block, his wails an eerie banshee shriek of terror, horror, and shame that throbbed with a mad ululation as his throat strained to vent the depths of his emotions. He sat bolt upright on his cot, his scrawny frame vibrating with the force of his cries. His eyes were unseeing despite the retracted eyelids that revealed the sclera surrounding his brown irises, and his pupils mere pinpricks as he gazed into the depths of a personal hell not visible in the grimly depressing cell he inhabited.

A passing guard pounded irritably on the cell door with his nightstick, sending a metallic clank echoing into Ron's cell. "Keep it down in there!" he ordered.

Despite the warning, Ron continued to scream. He stretched one hand into the air, fingers clawing as though blindly grasping for something, but they found nothing. He screamed like a lost soul - horrified by the full and certain knowledge that he was beyond redemption or salvation, and facing the absolute certainty of his own eternal damnation.

But as the guard turned to summon another to intervene with the screamer, the young man fell silent as suddenly and abruptly as though a switch had been flipped and all animation left him. He slumped bonelessly back onto the cot, his outstretched hand still clutching blindly and uselessly at nothing at all as his body shook slowly up and down as the cot reverberated with the motion imparted by his collapse.

Finally, Ron lay unconscious on the cot once more, as still and silent as though he had never made a sound, nor moved a muscle.

"Drunks," the guard shook his head in disgusted dismissal. He returned to his rounds, still shaking his head at the weird behavior.

Despite his casual dismissal of the event as a drunk's nightmares, throughout the remainder of his shift the guard often found himself casting a wary glance back over his shoulder towards the unconscious young man who had screamed so... eerily. Even though he couldn't quite figure out what it was, he felt something was just a little _off_ about the young man - and it wasn't just the smell that clung to him despite the police's several attempts to wash it away.

"Foolishness," he was still telling himself as he clocked out after his shift.

Despite his attempt to ignore the discomfort he felt, as the guard walked out of the precinct, his feet led him along a different route home than usual. Without conscious planning, he made a brief stop along the way home.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," he began, staring into the darkened niche of the confessional as he repeated the familiar mantra, seeking the comfort of absolution.

xxXXxx

In the basement of the station house, a harried clerk completed the daily task of entering a stack of fingerprint cards into the computer. The unique identifiers that the cards contained would eventually be entered into the national offender database, where they would be compared to evidence collected at crime scenes around the country, federal employee records, previous submissions from this and other police departments, and cross-checked against warrants, lists maintained by various legal institutions, and several federal agencies.

Despite what was frequently shown on TV, all of this processing did not happen instantaneously. Even the best computers take time to crunch numbers. Despite this inevitable fact, it was still far faster, more efficient, and less prone to errors of interpretation or omission than the old, manual, card-based system that it had replaced. It would also continue functioning around the clock without a single pause to rest tired and aching eyes - and that is precisely what it did.

After verifying that no results had been returned from the fingerprint system since the last time he had checked, the clerk collected his jacket, and gladly headed home after a busy shift, leaving the system to do its work. The computer, obeying its programmed instructions, processed the fingerprints, interfaced with the host computer, and continued with the task of identification and registration without the need for further user intervention.

xxXXxx

In a sterile, isolated, insulated, and thoroughly controlled (climate, access, and humidity were among the dozens of factors restricted to ensure the proper and secure operation of its contents) room a great distance from the clerk's office as the crow flies, yet nearly as close as a thought as the electron or photon flowed (depending on the route's medium), a red banner message flashed across a control console. At the sight of the message, and the information thereby revealed, a blue gloved hand reached out and pressed a white button on a black, rectangular box sitting on the desk beside the monitor.

"Get me Dr. Director, please."

xxXXxx

**

to be continued...

**


	8. You lock the door And throw away the key

**Chapter 8: You lock the door And throw away the key **

Agent Kendall, a twelve year veteran of Global Justice, monitored the controls of the hoverjet casually as the autopilot flew the aircraft steadily towards its destination. She read the gauges, and the various readouts, but didn't directly touch the controls.

The autopilot system was simple, automated, and as close to foolproof as a large number of greatly educated and highly talented scientists in GJ's employ could render it. She saw little reason to interfere in its operation, especially after a long day as part of the search and rescue operation for her passenger's missing partner.

Despite the darkness and the lack of light beyond the minimal self-illuminated instrumentation of the cockpit, she had no problem seeing thanks to her multi-spectrum sunglasses. They were currently converting the variations in infrared radiation into a visible wavelength, which painted her vision in a rainbow of hues, but enabled her to see in the near total darkness.

Shifting in her seat, Kendall adjusted her posture to ease a bit of tension in her back. _"I'll be glad when this day's over - or this shift, is more like it; the day is likely to end first."_

Glancing over her shoulder, she realized her passenger was still wide awake despite the darkened cabin, the length of her own day, the lack of conversation, and the emotional stress that she was under. _"Must be rough,"_ Kendall empathized silently. _"Losing a partner's a very bad thing, and she's still so young."_

**XXXxxxXXX**

_"'Mr. Stoppable, Mrs. Stoppable; I'm sorry.' No, that's too... generic. 'Ron was a hero, Mr. and Mrs. Stoppable. He saved...' No... that's too... impersonal. 'Ron cared for me more than he cared for himself...' No... that might make them think that... that... How about... 'I killed your son.'"_

Kim blinked, fighting to suppress the sudden upwelling of tears as she thought about the levels of truth she could see staring accusingly back at her from within that bald statement. _"I can't tell them that, even if I know they'll already be thinking it."_

She'd been trying to think of how to tell Ron's parents what happened since the plane had lifted from the amphibious assault ship without much success. Truthfully, she had been doing the same for hours before that point as well, but once Kim was actually on the way home, and the reality of the impending confrontation with Ron's family began to loom closer and closer, it had transformed into the primary focus of her concentration, dominating her thoughts. Dozens, _hundreds_ of lines, combinations of words, scenarios, had all played out in her head, and been rejected. **None** of them were good enough, satisfying enough, or meaningful enough for her, for them, or for _Ron_.

_"What can I say? What can I do?"_

**XXXxxxXXX**

Agent Kendall turned back to the controls and checked the chronometer feature on her stop watch while she stretched. _"Still a while to go yet,"_ she noted, fighting the urge to yawn.

Before she could check the readings on the instrumentation yet again (more as an aid to staving off sleep than from need), a low tone sounded in her earpieces. Touching a control on the side of her helmet, she acknowledged the communication quietly. "Kendall," she answered, speaking into the integrated microphone that sprouted from the left side of her helmet.

Kim overheard the pilot's quiet voice, and her internal debate quieted as she listened curiously. Indeed, she found herself almost desperately eager for the distraction from her increasingly gloomy thoughts. Even though she could only hear one side of the conversation, she shamelessly eavesdropped, straining her ears to catch every word.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Us, ma'am? You _do_ remember..."

"No, ma'am."

"Affirmative. I'll adjust our course to Zulu-Bravo Seven-Two-Three."

"Really? She'll be..." a note of surprised delight entered the pilot's voice, but was just as quickly banished. "Oh. Yes. No, now I understand... Yes, I... Why...? What...?"

From a recessed slot in the control console, located between the pilot and co-pilot's station, a faint hum could be heard as a light that wouldn't have been noticeable if the craft's cabin lights had been lit began to emanate from somewhere inside the center console. One by one, many sheets of paper were extruded from the opening to fall into a small hopper designed for that purpose, eventually forming a stack of printed output between the seats. _"Fax? Teletype? Laser printer?"_ Kim wondered, glancing between the pages and the pilot as the light inside the slot finally winked out.

"So he was spotted in Ber...? Oh, yes, ma'am," the pilot spoke into the microphone, then listened carefully, unconsciously nodding several times, despite the impossibility (or technically, im**plausibility** since she was, after all, part of an organization that utilized espionage as much as (if not more than) conventional police work - you could never be completely certain you weren't under covert surveillance whenever you were within a Global Justice installation or vehicle) of being seen. "I understand."

"Authorization?" Kendall asked after a moment, listening carefully to the transmission.

"Confirmed," the pilot nodded once more, even as she was punching the modifications to their flight plans into the navigational computer. "New mission parameters set. Our estimated time of arrival at Middleton should be pushed back approximately five hours. Will that be enough time?"

_"New mission parameters?"_ Kim wondered silently. She blinked, then stretched carefully, trying to force herself to become more alert. She winced as she heard a creak as a joint flexed, and a pop from her left knee as her bones shifted. _"Ouch."_ she thought to herself, more from habit than from any great need. It wasn't really painful, but the sensation as the joint moved _was_ disturbing.

Kim was tired - physically, mentally, and emotionally - and she felt like her body was straining its resources to keep her going. She didn't want to refuse a new mission outright, even though she was really tempted to - or at the very least, to try to delay it. _"Maybe it can wait until tomorrow."_

As she considered that possibility, a small voice in Kim's head reminded her, _"But on the other hand, if we do go on another mission, I won't have to face Ron's parents until later..."_ The thought was tremendously appealing, she realized guiltily.

"Acknowledged," the pilot signed off, then sighed tiredly as she shifted, settling her body armor more firmly on her torso. "You heard?" she asked Kim, raising her voice a little.

"Yep; what's the sitch? And why us? Why _now_?" Kim asked. She was glad that her voice sounded steadier than she felt at the moment.

"Don't worry; it's nothing complicated. Just a simple prisoner transfer - transporting someone from local PD to GJ custody. Dr. Director asked for you to handle it personally, and since the prisoner needs to go to Middleton too, it won't delay our arrival there too badly."

"'Five hours?'" Kim repeated.

"That's right; a short stopover to pick him up, and we'll be on our way again. You should try to get some rest beforehand," she advised. "We're still a few hours out from Florida."

"Florida?" Kim wondered aloud. "That's not exactly on our original flight path."

"No, but like I said, the Director wants you to handle it personally." The pilot pulled off her glasses, thumbing off the power to the lenses, then warned, "I'm turning up the cabin lights; watch your eyes."

Kim blinked as the light level gradually increased. Her eyes watered a little as her tired eyes slowly adjusted to the change in illumination, but she soon adapted since they had only been raised to a dim level. She knuckled her eyes, seeing spots from the pressure of her fingers, and straightened her posture in her seat.

While Kim was still blinking in the gloom, the pilot quickly read through the stack of printouts with the aid of a small pocket flashlight. As she scanned through the pages, she shuffled them into two stacks, holding the light between her teeth when necessary as she organized the papers. When done, she clicked off the flashlight and turned in her seat.

Kendall handed the slightly smaller of the two stacks to her passenger. "Start with these; go ahead and read them over and let me know if you have any questions."

Kim accepted the papers with a tired smile before settling back to read them. At first it was still too dark to read effectively and her eyes ached at the strain, but the light level inside the aircraft continued to rise, slowly and gradually enough that it was almost unnoticeable - and her tired eyes were grateful for the slow pace of the changes.

As she had expected given Kendall's brief summary, the papers were various forms and the supporting documentation for a local police department to transfer custody of a prisoner into Global Justice's jurisdiction. They had been signed by a Federal Magistrate - _"Burke. Burke. I don't think I know him... or her,"_ Kim thought silently, noting the presence of only a first initial "G," and not a first name - and were for the transfer of a prisoner named "John Doe #234."

When she had completed reading the papers, she set them carefully atop the empty seat beside her. _"Why me? Why now? If it was Drakken or Junior or something, I could almost understand why she'd want me to do it, but why am I needed for just some guy - and **tonight** of all nights?"_

"Ready for the next part?" Kendall asked.

"Sure," Kim sighed, a wealth of exhaustion and grudging acceptance blended in the small exhalation. "What is it?"

"Don't worry; it's all part of the same task." She handed Kim part of her own stack of papers, but tucked a few away inside her body armor once Kim was distracted by the fresh stack.

Kim read the new papers as well. "'Surrender all evidence collected, analyses performed, information, possessions, and paperwork associated with the person known as "John Doe #234"'?" Kim read aloud. "Who is this guy?"

"That's... a good question," Kendall evaded carefully, not exactly answering the question.

"Wonderful," Kim breathed sourly, noting the evasion. _"Maybe GJ doesn't even know."_ She settled back in her seat and tried to make herself comfortable, keeping her mind resolutely blank to avoid distracting thoughts as she awaited their arrival.

In the slowly lightening gloom of the cabin, Kim actually found herself glad for the mission, despite her guilty thoughts about the matter. Despite her tiredness, the awkwardness, and the general annoyance of it, while she was on the mission (and since it was a transfer, it would last until they were home in Middleton), she'd have something to focus on _other_ than the empty seat beside her - and the family of the person _not_ seated there that she'd have to eventually face.

_"I will talk to them,"_ she promised herself. _"Eventually."_

xxXXxx

The Global Justice hoverjet landed in an empty parking lot located just behind the police station - filling two-thirds of it. Kim and Agent Kendall disembarked, and with a beep that sounded more like a car alarm than anything else, the aircraft sealed itself behind them. When the craft had secured itself, they walked past the few curious onlookers (not many were loitering near the police station in the middle of the night) and marched inside, Kim hard on the older agent's heels.

xxXXxx

The desk sergeant gawked at them as they came in - the Global Justice agent in full duty body armor, helmet, and sunglasses, and Kim Possible - who frankly looked more tired and irritable than heroic at the moment, but was still a world famous heroine. "Can I help you?" he asked, slowly glancing back and forth between them.

Kim mutely spread the paperwork on the sergeant's desk, grouping them together into small stacks of related material as Agent Kendall answered for them both. "Prisoner transfer. We need to take custody of one of the detainees in your custody and all the evidence, belongings, and reports relating thereto."

"I'll need to verify this," the sergeant pointed out, looking down at the voluminous official-looking paperwork spread forbiddingly before him before looking back up at the two.

"Of course," Kendall's lips creased into a smile in the small gap visible between the helmet, glasses, and body armor she wore. "Feel free." She pulled off her sunglasses, revealing her eyes and the small crinkles that appeared at their corners as her smile broadened. "We'll wait."

Kim on the other hand, scowled at the delay that she could foresee growing even longer than expected. She tried not to yawn as the police officer began making some phone calls.

xxXXxx

It did take a good deal of time, both because of their off-hour arrival, and the number of departments and units of the local bureaucracy that were involved - all of whom had to be notified, and had to provide a delegate or authorized party to sign off on the transfer. Despite these factors, a stack of folders and a bag containing the prisoner's personal effects were eventually joined on an empty desk appropriated for the purpose by a larger, brown paper bag that had been sealed with tamper- resistant tape and signed in front of witnesses as testament to the continuity of the chain of evidence.

After yet more paperwork was signed, there remained only one last element to gather to complete the collection. "Will you go collect our prisoner?" Kendall asked Kim, nodding towards the stack of material they had accumulated. "I'll keep an eye on the rest of our stuff."

"Sure," Kim sighed, glad the whole thing was almost over. She wasn't used to dealing with bureaucracy (it was much easier and quicker to just use favors and her reputation as a crime fighter to get things done, and let GJ and Wade deal with the paperwork and all the boring non-mission details behind the scenes) and it had felt excruciatingly tedious to have to go through all of them with just Agent Kendall as her guide - especially since she'd been tired and irritated before the whole process had even begun.

_"I'm just glad she's here; I'd have run out of here screaming an hour ago if I had to go through all of this by myself."_ At that thought, a vivid memory of _why_ she would have to do it solo now reared its head, shredding some of her composure. She froze, closed her eyes, and slowly counted to ten, sending the thought to the back of her mind. _"Deal with it later,"_ she told herself fiercely.

When she was ready, Kim opened her eyes and nodded to the pair of officers who were waiting to escort her. She fell into step with them, and obligingly followed them deeper into the station.

xxXXxx

As Kim walked away, Agent Kendall drew another sheet of paper from under the chest plate of her body armor, and without a word, handed it to the chief of police.

He read the order, his eyebrows rising, then looked curiously over the top of the form at the Agent.

"Seriously?" he asked.

"Completely," she replied. "There are... reasons. Most, it's probably best for you not to think about."

The chief shrugged, and crooked a finger to a waiting sergeant. He handed the form to the man, and nodded his approval when the man had read the instructions contained on the sheet and looked up for confirmation. They watched the man hurry off with alacrity, and the chief explained, "He'll take care of it. We'll run off a copy of the tape and have it ready for you to take with you before they get back with the prisoner."

"Thank you for the cooperation," Agent Kendall smiled tiredly as her eyes shifted to the closed door where Kim had left her sight towards the back of the station. "And my apologies for the... subterfuge. Dr. Director has some concerns, and a copy of documented, spontaneous reactions could allay some of them - or at least narrow down the list of ones we need to be concerned about."

Shrugging again, the chief waved off the apology. "Not a problem. Just makes me glad I don't have her job."

xxXXxx

In the back of the station, Kim waited between two sealed steel doors. After a time, when the guards watching through their monitors were sure of her authorization and clearance, and the lack of any untoward factors, she was buzzed through. An officer opened the inner door, and the three stepped through into the jail area proper.

A prison guard joined Kim's small entourage as she entered, and he led the silent group onward. "He's been quiet, mainly," the guard commented as they walked. "Asleep. He was screaming for a bit - nightmare, I suspect - but he hasn't really been awake since he was taken into custody."

When neither Kim or the officers responded, the guard fell silent. He led them past a few occupied cells in a long corridor of identical appearing cells, until they finally reached the one where Kim's soon-to-be prisoner was kept.

"Up and at 'em," the guard called into the cell, as he waved to a security camera as a signal to the guard watching them on a closed circuit monitor. He waited patiently, one hand resting on one of the horizontal cross-pieces in the door.

The watchful guard in a secure room in another part of the building noted the guard's wave. He turned a key and, while holding it in the turned position, pushed a small green button in a bank of similar buttons to unlock the cell. He made a notation on a log sheet of what he had done, then settled in to watch the activity on the monitor once more.

When the lock disengaged, it was heralded by a solid thunk as an electromagnet powered down and a length of steel retracted, freeing the door to move. The waiting guard swung the door open with a squeal of metal on metal, then stepped aside, leaving the small party spread in a rough semicircle facing the cell entrance.

Inside the cell, a slight figure in a bright orange jumpsuit shifted from atop the cot that was against one wall and rose to his feet. One hand reached up to scratch at the back of his neck as he turned to face the door.

Before the watching policemen and jail guards could fathom her intent, Kim had moved. She cried out **"RON!"**, and as the policemen and the guard stared, she all but tackled the prisoner as she smothered him in an embrace.

**XXXxxxXXX**

**To be continued...**

  



	9. The lights are on, but you're not home

xxXXxx

**Chapter 9: The lights are on, but you're not home**

Ron Stoppable awoke with a jerk, his eyes widening and his chest heaving as he strained to fill his lungs with air. He gasped, coughing and heaving as his stomach convulsed. He curled into a fetal ball, barely noticing the rough texture of the blanket lying beneath his cheek. When his breathing slowed, and approached a semblance of normality, his muscles relaxed, and he slumped flat onto his back, panting as he stared up at a ceiling that he knew he had never seen before, but seemed weirdly familiar.

_"Where am I?"_ Ron wondered, blinking in surprise. Above him was a featureless grey slab with a recessed light fixture that could only be described as institutional - and secure.

With a muffled groan as his head throbbed dully with pain, Ron tilted his head to the side. _"I'm in jail?"_ Ron thought in wonder, _"Wait... why doesn't that surprise me?"_

Trying not to move his head much, Ron lowered his eyes, looking down the length of his body. His feet were elevated, and as a result, he had a good view of the high visibility orange jumpsuit he was wearing. _"I can't believe I'm goin' commando... How'd I know **that**?"_ he wondered, his mind awhirl with confusion.

He turned his head, resting his cheek on the blanket again and tried to examine his surroundings without irritating his headache. The cell was plain - bare concrete and steel, painted a grimly monotonous shade of grey on walls, roof, and floor. Three of the walls were featureless concrete, with the wall above his head as he lay on the cot a crosshatching arrangement of thick steel bars. It smelled vaguely of old urine and bleach, particularly from the direction of the lidless, seatless, stainless steel toilet that graced one corner. The small room was clean, but still had as a general atmosphere a sickly miasmic conglomeration he could only describe as "depression" that lingered as a legacy of the many previous tenants. The cot he lay on boasted recently laundered sheets, but the blanket he could see from the corner of his eye as he gazed across the narrow expanse of his room was fading and grey - barely darker than the walls of the cell. _"Whoa... Major deja vu."_

_"I'm not manacled to the wall,"_ he noted, his head aching as he wondered if that was a good thing or not. He tried to remember what he was doing here - or how he'd gotten here, or... Well, much of anything else; his mind was sort of hazy, and details were sparse, but an occasional mental image rose before his mind's eye as he sought enlightenment for his current condition.

_"We swam to the base..."_ he remembered, closing his eyes to help him focus and ease his head. _"Gemini hit the self-destruct..."_ Red light. _"Yes... I remember those..."_ Blank wall. _"We were blocked..."_ Pod. One. K.P. _"She's safe... and so is Rufus... Good..."_ He found that thought comforting. And then... _"Running..."_

Ron winced, as a throbbing pain lanced from his temples through his head like a pair of icepicks. A faint, barely audible whimper escaped through his clenched teeth. _"Maybe I'll think about that... later."_

Foregoing his mental excursion, Ron simply lay on the bed, inverted from the normal position, (with his head turned closest to his cell door, and his feet resting atop the cot's pillow) and stared down his orange-clad body at the undecorated wall above his feet. _"This is thoroughly freaky,"_ he mused, closing his eyes.

"Up and at 'em," a voice called. Ron blinked, opening his eyes, but didn't move from his prone position.

The sound of rusting hinges squealing as metal was drawn across metal scraped at Ron's ears as the door to his cell swung open. He winced, but the assault on his hearing was mercifully brief, and his instinctive move to shield his ears halted before his arms had done more than twitch.

_"Now's when I need to move, huh?"_ Ron thought. Swinging his legs over the edge of the cot, Ron rose unsteadily to his feet, wincing at the stab of pain emanating from the back of his skull as the cool cement underfoot leached heat from his toes. He turned to face the door to his cell while scratching at an itch on the back of his neck, directly above the point of the greatest pain, trying to ready himself to confront whoever had imprisoned him, despite his poor condition.

**"RON!"**

Ron blinked, but before he could think or move, he was engulfed by a redhead. He staggered back a pace as she encircled his ribs with a hug that seemed powerful enough to shatter them if she exerted even the slightest additional pressure.

Ron froze, his back stiffening and his breath beginning to come in short panting exhalations as blind, unreasoning panic and fear began to overtake him. _"No, no, no, no, no..."_

xxXXxx

Kim pulled back from the embrace as Ron froze, stiffening unnaturally. Her brow creased in confusion as she watched the blood drain from his face as he turned to stare at... _"The toilet?"_ she wondered silently.

She chuckled, her relief at finding him (_"He's alive! Alive!"_ a tiny voice crowed triumphantly in her mind) so complete and overwhelming that she could forgive him anything at this moment. "Want us to come back in a few minutes?" she asked, gesturing with her head to the facilities as she smirked at him.

But Ron didn't move or respond to the joke. He simply continued to grow progressively more pale and stiff. She touched his arm, but he didn't react.

Kim took Ron's face between her palms as she forcibly turned his gaze from the toilet to meet hers. His eyes were unfocused, staring through her as if she wasn't there - or as if _he_ wasn't. She snapped her fingers in front of his eyes, then waved her hand before him, but he didn't react to either.

"What's wrong with him?" she demanded, turning away from her catatonic partner.

Her police escort looked at each other in confusion. The guard answered for them, "We think he's been sleeping off a bender. Like I said, he's mostly just been asleep."

"K.P.?" Ron's sudden whisper in the total silence was breathy, almost inaudible.

"Ron?" Kim asked, hopefully, moving close to him to look into his eyes. Their usual warm chocolate color was subdued and muted, but at least his pupils were slowly returning to a more normal size, rather than being fully blown.

"You're really here... I thought you were dead... I thought I killed you," he whispered, all but silently.

Tears filled Kim's eyes, and she impatiently brushed them away with the back of a gloved hand. "No. You saved me, Ron. You saved me. Everything's fine. You ready to come home, hero?"

"But I..." he stammered, his face slowly regaining a bit of the color and animation he had lost as his mind partially returned from wherever it had retreated when she'd greeted him. "What happened?" he asked.

"It doesn't matter," Kim told him firmly. "C'mon, let's get going." She tugged his arm and led him past the boggled knot of guards who'd watched the reunion with wide eyes and curious expressions. Ron didn't resist her, but neither did he make an effort to move without her compulsion.

Kim stopped in the prison corridor, disconcerted by his continued fugue. _"It's like he's sleepwalking or something. Why isn't he waking up?"_ But then a sudden thought brought a quick smile to her face. "I know someone else who'll be happy to see you," she told him, ignoring the lack of response to her comment - it just reinforced the need.

Reaching into her pocket, Kim drew out a small pink lump. As her fingers curved around him, Rufus slowly stretched, rising to his full length perched atop Kim's palm. He scratched his belly, yawned, belched, then noticed Ron.

_**"Ron!"**_ Rufus screeched, loud enough and clearly enough that the trailing policemen actually heard him. They looked at each other, trying to figure out if they'd _really_ just heard the rat talk, then just shook their heads in bemusement.

Rufus leaped from Kim's palm and ran across the cement floor. He climbed atop Ron's bare foot, slipped into the leg of his jumpsuit, and began to climb.

Ron began to unconsciously giggle and squirm, blinking all the while, until the naked mole rat popped from out of the neck of his jumpsuit. Rufus spread himself out and hugged Ron's throat powerfully with all four limbs plus his tail, chittering and frantically pouring out a stream of words that Ron couldn't really understand, but he could tell were heartfelt. His meaning and intent were clear enough that he didn't need to understand them.

"Rufus," Ron breathed. His hands lifted and wrapped themselves around the little pink animal that had attached himself to Ron's neck, and gently squeezed, hugging his whole body.

Ron had felt confused, out of sorts, thoroughly weird, and like he was trapped in a dream even though he thought he was awake - and unsure which was worse: the reality or the dream. But in the midst of his confusion and uncertainty, Rufus was like a breath of fresh air washing away the funk that had encompassed him, leading him back to full wakefulness and awareness of himself.

Rufus was real; his warmth on Ron's neck was undeniable. His high-pitched words, tiny claws, and the emotional overload he was generating grounded Ron like not even Kim's presence had. What it said about him that his lifeline to sanity was a naked mole rat, he neither knew nor cared; it worked, and that was what was important. They clung together in the prison hallway, dancing and laughing in relief and the simple joy of being alive, and reunited.

"I hear you buddy," Ron answered his pet's glad ranting. "I hear you."

"Stinky," Rufus noted, but didn't let up on his grip, rubbing his bald head against the underside of Ron's jaw.

"I know," Ron chuckled, "I do smell pretty bad, don't I?"

He looked up from his pet's eyes, and met Kim's shining green ones as she watched the reunion - and Ron's returning awareness of self - with happiness. "Hi there, Kimmeleh. You look terrible. Have you tried getting some sleep? I hear it's good for you."

Kim laughed and hugged both Rufus and Ron, and everything felt _right_ again. "Good to have you back, hero," she breathed in his ear.

She took him by the hand, and led him off again. But this time was different; this time he walked with her, rather than being pulled by her, and it was like the difference between night and day, and all was right with Kim's world once more.

xxXXxx

Agent Kendall watched Kim lead the prisoner in his orange jumpsuit out of the depths of the station. She noted Kim's grip on his hand, and the ecstatic naked mole rat perched on his shoulder and nodded at two of the signs Dr. Director's covert instructions had told her to watch for.

The boggled escorts that Kim had followed into the jail were now following Kim as she led the strange procession. They shrugged at the odd looks on the other policemen's faces. They were as mystified by the strange behavior as the others were.

Kendall nodded to herself, and drew the last piece of paper from within her armor. "Sorry about this captain," she repeated, a regretful smile on her face. "Orders."

"Hmm," the captain frowned as he took the paper. "You couldn't have given this to me earlier?"

"This one was situational," she explained. "We needed - and need - to verify that the prisoner is who we think he is."

"A gag order?" the captain read, then looked up as his eyebrows shot up towards his receding hair line. "Why?"

"It's only a short term one," Kendall soothed. "I think Dr. Director wants to tell the family personally."

"Oh." He visibly considered that, then shrugged, accepting the reasoning. "That's alright then. Frankly, I don't think we'll be able to keep it quiet for long, even with this," he waved the paper in emphasis. "It's obvious Miss Possible knows him, so that's going to cause talk. Too many people, too much interest - too much _weirdness_ - in this whole thing to keep it quiet."

"I know," Kendall acknowledged the point tiredly with a rueful shrug. "But like I said, it doesn't have to be for long."

"Good enough," the captain nodded his understanding and acceptance having voiced his protests, then shook her hand as he rose to his feet. "Have a nice flight, Agent Kendall. It's been... interesting."

"That it has," she admitted, then thanked the sergeant who had approached as he somewhat surreptitiously handed her a videotape. "And thank you."

xxXXxx

Ron sighed as he sank down into the plush comfort of the GJ hoverjet's passenger seat. _"This feels almost **too** good."_

"Strap yourselves in," Agent Kendall ordered from the front of the craft. "We're taking off."

Kim and Ron obeyed, clicking the harness into place. Rufus tucked himself inside Ron's jumpsuit, snuggling down into the shoulder area and stretched himself out, keeping as much of his body in contact with Ron as he could. Ron grinned down into the gap in the neck of his jumpsuit at him. "All set?"

"Whoa-kay," Rufus acknowledged sleepily.

Once they were ready for liftoff, Kim stripped off her gloves, grabbed Ron's hand in hers and held it tightly. As the engines whined, she abruptly leaned back in her seat, and fell instantly asleep, his hand still clasped in hers.

Ron smiled as she slumped against her headrest and tried to free his hand, but her grip held fast. As the hoverjet flew into the west, Ron tried to put a little more effort into it, but Kim just mumbled unhappily and tightened her hold. As the aircraft settled in at cruising altitude, Ron sighed and finally gave in, letting her keep hold of him, no matter how uncomfortable the requisite position made her look.

_"She looks tired,"_ he sighed, leaning back in the chair. Ahead of him, the pilot had settled in, crossing her arms across her chest, and looking distinctly uninviting as a conversational partner.

Ron didn't want to sleep - what little he could remember of his dreams made him glad he didn't remember more - but with the cabin lights low, the view outside the windows shrouded in darkness, and no one to talk too, he doubted he'd have much choice. _"Or maybe not,"_ he realized, looking down at Kim's leg.

Ron awkwardly reached over towards Kim, trying not to disturb Rufus or Kim as he did so. For a second he froze, still reaching across the aisle, having the odd feeling that he was being watched, but Kim was asleep, and the pilot - whose name eluded him (_"Did we get introduced?"_ he wondered) - was looking out the front window.

xxXXxx

Agent Kendall's eyes watched every move Ron made in the technicolor display of her sunglasses. The feed from a hidden camera in the roof of the craft let her watch every move he made, every breath he took, despite the dim lighting and her seeming inattention.

As Ron reached for Kim, unobtrusively, her fingers twitched minisculely closer to the butt of her sidearm - a cold steel revolver, not the fancy ray gun or stunner she usually carried on missions, but a simple killing tool designed to stop a human - or human-like simulacra - and put him, her, or it, down hard and fast. _"What are you doing?"_ she asked him silently, watching for the slightest indication of harmful intent on Ron's part as Kim slept happily and innocently beside him.

xxXXxx

After a moment's pause, Ron resumed his motion. _"I'm just feeling twitchy,"_ he reassured himself. He reached across the small gap between the seats and pulled the Kimmunicator from the side pocket of Kim's cargo pants.

Kendall slowly released a tensed breath, and relaxed the tension in her forearm, letting her fingers fall slack. Ron leaned back in his seat and lifted the Kimmunicator with his unoccupied hand.

Unaware of his watcher, Ron pushed a button on the front of the Kimmunicator.

xxXXxx

"Sorry, Kim, no new..." Wade trailed off as he stared disbelieving into his monitor. _**"Ron!"**_ he yelled.

Shaking his head frantically, Ron tried to quiet the surprised youth. "Shh... Kim's asleep."

"I can't believe it," Wade breathed, staring in open disbelief at the teen he had honestly believed was dead - dead and unrecoverable at the bottom of the ocean. "She found you! I thought you were dead!" His expression shifted from disbelief, to shock, then to happiness and surprise as he continued to stare at Ron, and he realized it wasn't a mistake or a dream.

"Apparently I was in Florida," Ron shrugged. "Go figure."

"How'd you get to Florida?" Wade demanded, his expression shifting minutely. "You were in the South Pacific." He began to type furiously on a keyboard, and suddenly the Kimmunicator erupted with a thin red beam that flashed around the cabin, running over anything and everything in a dazzling display of optical confusion.

Blinking, momentarily dazzled by the display, Ron asked, "What was that?"

"Oh, nothing," Wade smirked, as he began compiling the scan's data and searching for discrepancies.

"Okay," Ron shrugged, dismissing it as unimportant. "Whatever. Anyway, I'm glad I didn't wake you."

Wade's smirk shifted into a smile as Ron didn't question what he was told. _"That sounds like Ron."_ "Are you okay?" he asked.

"I guess," Ron explained hesitantly, glancing over at Kim, then to the silent and seemingly inattentive pilot before continuing. "I just feel... strange."

Glancing away from the scan analysis, Wade asked, "Strange how."

"I don't know," Ron admitted. "Diffreaky, confrazzled, crazoggled, awkweird... all at once, you know?"

"Not really. Have you been hanging around Jim and Tim a lot lately? You're not exactly speaking proper English at the moment you know."

"Hoo-sha," Ron grinned, but the moment of humor quickly faded, and his grin disappeared with it. "I know, but I'm feeling... weird. But I can't really explain it, and nothing really seems to describe what I'm feeling. It just... is."

"Maybe you need sleep," Wade counseled, running a data miner routine before sending a subharmonic pulse through the Kimmunicator's dataport, and gathering the returns.

Shaking his head, Ron nixed that idea. "No way. I had some way freaky dreams." He paled as the feeling that had overtaken him in his cell when Kim hugged him began to return, but he quickly shook his head, concentrating on Kim's grip on his hand, and Rufus' warm, comforting weight on his shoulder. "I dunno if I ever want to sleep again."

The Kimmunicator sprouted a telescoping probe that patted him on the cheek comfortingly - and incidentally collected a genetic sample for analysis. "It'll be okay, Ron," Wade consoled him. "We just have to figure out what happened."

Ron winced as a stab of pain greeted the thought. "Maybe later," he gritted. "It gives me a headache to even think about it."

"Seriously? That is weird."

"Yeah," Ron gritted through the pain, before sighing as it began to diminish. He glanced over at Kim, still deep in sleep, and still holding onto him.

"What is it?" Wade asked.

"Kim's acting weird too. She's all... touchy. She won't let go of my hand."

Wade paused to compose his thoughts. All the scans agreed that this was Ron. No matter how impossible - or implausible - it was, he was there, alive, and had somehow managed to make it to the other side of the planet when by all rational thought he should have been long since dead on the bottom of the sea. "She thought you were dead," Wade began slowly. "I did too. We thought... well, it was bad, Ron." he finished simply.

A memory of thinking Kim was dead, and _knowing_ both that he had done it, and had **enjoyed** doing it began to surface in Ron's thoughts. He closed his eyes and desperately told himself, _"She's alive. I didn't do it. it's not real... it's not real... it's not real..."_ "it's not real... it's not real... it's not real..."

"Ron?" Wade asked worriedly.

"Majorly freaky dream," Ron panted, shaking his head and flinging a few droplets of sweat from his brow. "I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to even _think_ about it."

A beep from beside Wade announced the completion of a processing routine. He opened a window on his console, and checked the display. "Genetic match: 100 - Identity confirmed."

Grinning in profound relief, Wade let himself sink back in his chair. Figuring out the how could wait; he had proved to his own satisfaction that this was really Ron, and the sheer joy and gratitude (to GJ, God, Kim, the universe in general or all of the above) for finding him alive was nearly overwhelming.

"So, if you don't want to talk about it, what _did_ you want to talk about?" Wade asked, grinning as he leaned back in his chair.

"I dunno. Something. Anything. Keep me awake?" Ron pleaded.

"I can stream your homework," Wade suggested.

"I said keep me awake," Ron retorted. Then he began to laugh, and it felt good and normal as Wade joined in, and it banished some of the weirdness.

xxXXxx

Despite the quiet conversation going on behind her, and the obvious acceptance that Ron Stoppable's closest acquaintances showed, Agent Kendall continued to monitor her prisoner closely. Team Possible - all of them - were young, and to an extent, naïve. This was in most things a benefit for them, but it also left them vulnerable to manipulation by unscrupulous and amoral individuals - and there were far too many of those in the world for anyone to sleep comfortably.

Dr. Director was neither young, nor naïve. Neither was Kendall.

Agent Kendall suspected that the possibilities inherent in the current situation that Dr. Director had shared during the briefing on the changed mission reflected only a fraction of the possibilities GJ's head had to consider. Even the few most likely ones that she _had_ shared had been horrific in their implications, and those might be only the tip of the iceberg. Kendall settled in for the remainder of the flight, prepared to act at a moment's notice, and watchful lest an unfortunate necessity be required.

Ron and Wade continued to chat while Kim slept the sleep of the just and the innocent.

And Agent Kendall was prepared to kill to keep her that way.

xxXXxx

As they neared the outer marker for the Middleton airport, Agent Kendall cleared her throat. "We're approaching Middleton," she announced. "Could you wake Kim, please?"

"Sure," Ron answered, looking up from the game of Fortress he was playing one handed on the Kimmunicator. He hit pause, and slipped the machine into a pocket.

"Kim," Ron whispered. "Kim," he said a little louder. "Kim!"

Kim shifted, but didn't move.

"Kimberly Anne Possible," Ron deepened his voice into an imitation of her father - a bad one, but recognizable in the attempt. "What's this charge on my credit card statement?"

"It was a sale at Club Banana," Kim shot upright, blinking wildly, "I had to..." she trailed off, her forehead knotting in anger, "Ron," she breathed, then the moment of anger warred with her relief that he was here - and alive - and the relief was easily the victor. "Ron," she sighed happily, the wrinkles in her forehead melting away. "It wasn't a dream. You're okay..."

"Yep," Ron grinned, feeling much better after talking to Wade for hours, playing some video games, and being held by both Kim and Rufus. "And we're nearly home."

Kim yawned widely, belatedly trying to cover her mouth mid- yawn with a hand, only to bring Ron's along with hers.

Ron grinned good-humoredly as she pulled him half out of his seat. "Nice one, K.P. - but I think you might need a filling in back."

"Cute," Kim grinned lopsidedly, and rested his hand against her cheek. To her surprise, Ron blanched, and she lowered the hand in surprise. "What?"

"Nothing," he smiled and tried to dismiss the weird moment, but he still looked wild-eyed.

"Hmm," Kim frowned, but couldn't maintain either the suspicion or sense of caution in the face of the overwhelming relief that filled her to the point of giddiness. She smiled, and Ron gratefully smiled back, happy that she'd let the matter drop.

xxXXxx

The hoverjet set down carefully on a helicopter landing pad at the Middleton airport. As Kim and Ron looked out the windows, they were surprised to see a cordon of Global Justice agents surrounding the area - agents armed with the glowing blue shock sticks they were more accustomed to seeing in the hands of Drakken's and Dementor's henchmen. Outside the cordon, a few news vans and reporters were gathered, aiming cameras at the aircraft as it landed.

Rather than powering down atop the large "H" that had been the center of the landing zone, the hoverjet levitated slowly across the tarmac. The plane continued until it entered a giant hanger whose doors opened just before they arrived, and closed immediately after they'd entered. Unseen behind them, the cordon of agents shifted to enclose the hanger, and keep the press far away.

xxXXxx

Still hand in hand, Kim and Ron disembarked from the aircraft, and into a blindingly bright light. They paused at the end of the ramp, shielding their eyes with their unoccupied hands. Without warning, Ron abruptly dropped out of sight as the ground beneath his feet opened up.

Ron yelped as his hand was yanked from Kim's and he was engulfed in darkness.

_**"RON!"**_

**

to be continued...

**


	10. No more war pigs of the power

xxXXxx

**Chapter 10: No more warpigs of the power**

Kim helped Ron as he slumped into the back seat of the car, pressing down on his head so that it wouldn't bump against the roof as he unsteadily slid into the car, clutching a small vinyl duffle bag colored identically to GJ's uniforms to his chest. _"I feel like I'm in a bad TV cop show,"_ Kim noted with a tired grin as she swung the door closed with a solid thump, sealing him inside.

She reclaimed the folder she'd deposited on the roof of the car when she'd noticed Ron's difficulty, then walked around the vehicle to the rear, vaguely wondering as she did how GJ could possibly have thought the vehicle would be effective as a "plain clothes" transport. The boxy, unstylish model was so unflattering, boring, and lacking in even the most basic amenities that only a civil servant looking for cost effective transport would find it in any way appealing. It all but screamed "government vehicle" even though it lacked the license plates and door decorations denoting its ownership that such vehicles usually carried.

"All set?" Agent Kendall asked as Kim paused by the rear passenger door. The GJ agent had shed her duty helmet and body armor at some point during the long investigation-slash- interrogation to determine Ron's identity, revealing her curly brunette hair and the dark blue uniform she'd worn beneath the protective carapace of her armor, but she still wore her sunglasses.

"I am _so_ ready," Kim sighed aloud, clambering into the car as their designated driver climbed into the driver's seat. Kim set her folder on the floor at her feet and leaned back against the imitation leather as she tried to relax.

As Kendall started the car, through the front windshield, Kim could see the hanger doors they'd flown through slowly start to retract. The titanic doors stopped moving once they were open just wide enough for the car to exit, leaving the entrance still largely obstructed.

Agent Kendall put the car in gear and slowly drove forward, steering the vehicle between the now darkened banks of lights that had blinded her and Ron (_"How long ago was that?"_ Kim wondered. _"It feels like we've been in here **forever**."_) when they'd first landed at the Middleton airport and disembarked from the hoverjet. _"What time is it, anyway?"_ Kim tried to recall, but between the shifting time zones, her nap, the moments of panic and long stretches of necessary worried idleness, it was futile. She eventually gave up the effort as a lost cause.

_"My time sense is majorly out of whack. But it doesn't really matter, anyway,"_ she admitted to herself, sighing with more than a hint of relief as the nose of the car breached the gap in the doors - the first checkpoint on their way. _"We're finally going home. Me **and** Ron."_ That simple fact more than made up for everything that Kim had endured on this entire, horrible mission.

Kim kept her face looking resolutely forward, despite the sudden barrage of flashes as the press - still being held back by GJ agents - noticed the passengers in the car as it exited the hanger and attempted to capture them on film. The strobe of camera flashes eventually faded into the distance as Kendall sped up, leaving the reporters far behind as she drove towards the airport's exit.

Out of the corner of her eye, Kim had noticed Ron's nonreaction to the media as they drove past - which was a refreshing change, but was somewhat worrisome; even when he wasn't trying too hard to be liked, he enjoyed being the center of attention, and the press sometimes gravitated to him - usually at Ron's eventual expense. At least his ignoring of them had a simple explanation; Ron was visibly leaning, resting his head against the cool glass of the door's window, and his eyelids were drooping.

_"Poor Ron,"_ Kim sighed silently. _"And here I was complaining that I had a hard day when his was so much tougher."_ She had thought everything would go back to normal once the hoverjet landed, but it was really when things had started.

Kim mirrored Ron's pose, and she found the chill of the window to be soothing against her cheek as her mind drifted back to how it had begun, who-knows-how-many hours before...

**oooOOOooo**

Kim stared disbelieving at the cement floor that looked completely solid, despite having just swallowed Ron. She stomped on the spot where Ron had vanished, to no effect; the floor was unyielding. Before her still slightly sleep fogged mind could work through precisely what had happened, a voice cut through her confusion.

"Greetings, Kimberly Possible."

Kim blinked, trying to see despite the glare that blurred her vision and left spots glowing on her retinas. Out of the bright light, a human silhouette strode forward. The shadowy outline - visible only as a patch of darkness against the intensity of the light - halted a short distance away, the stance such that it appeared to cock one hip.

As Kim squinted into the brilliant glow of a dozen lamps, the figure raised one hand, and the blinding lights were abruptly extinguished. Kim blinked, and in the sudden shocking cessation of illumination, her watering eyes identified the source of the light as a bank of klieg lamps.

Kim's eyes slowly began to recover as she blinked and rubbed at them furiously, and she soon realized the silhouette was that of a woman. After they had recovered still further, and adjusted to the less intense ambient light inside the hanger, Kim was startled to find that she recognized the shadowy figure. "Dr. Director! What happened to Ron? What's going on?" she demanded while rushing towards her, still blinking wildly. Glowing after images continued to haunt her eyes, burned into her retinas, but Kim could see well enough to navigate while waiting for the ghostly blotches to fade.

The head of Global Justice held up a hand to forestall Kim's questions. "All will become clear. Follow me please."

"I don't understand," Kim shook her head, but obediently followed after the older woman, peppering her with questions as she continued to blink her watering eyes. "What are you doing here? Where's Ron? What happened to him?"

"He has been... diverted," Dr. Director explained cautiously, "to keep him occupied while we're getting ready."

"I don't understand," Kim shook her head slowly. "What's going on?"

"Tell me, Kimberly," Dr. Director asked, an odd intensity in her voice that Kim hadn't heard in it ever before. "Have you any doubts as to the identity of the prisoner I sent you to recover?"

Kim's brow furrowed. "What do you mean? What's this about Ron?"

"What I mean, Kimberly," she explained, "is this; you called him 'Ron.' Are you completely sure of the identity of your recent travelling companion? You have no doubts that the prisoner you escorted is Ronald Stoppable? None at all? He has done nothing unusual, abnormal, or out of character since you've been reunited?"

"Abnormal? We are talking about Ron here," Kim noted with a raised eyebrow.

"Out of the ordinary for him," Dr. Director patiently clarified, granting Kim some leeway because of the circumstances.

"Not... really. He does seem... jumpy," Kim admitted reluctantly, "and twitchy. But he said he's been having nightmares, and I know _I'm_ acting oddly because of everything that's happened, so even if he _were_ acting strange, it wouldn't really mean anything. So yes, I know it's really Ron."

Dr. Director smiled sadly. "I wish I could afford to accept that without question, I really do. But there are... other factors to consider. I'm afraid we _have_ to confirm his identity," Dr. Director informed her bluntly, "before we can allow him to be released."

"Allow...?" Kim began, then fell silent as her eyebrows shot up. "What are you talking about?"

As Kim and Dr. Director had been speaking, they had been walking towards the center of the hanger. Dr. Director fell silent, and as Kim waited for her to respond, she absently took note of her surroundings, then looked more closely as her interest was reluctantly piqued.

The floor at the center of the hanger had been painted a bright yellow, forming a geometrically perfect circle. Surrounding this yellow area, evenly spaced along the perimeter, were a dozen metal boxes sitting flush to the ground and positioned just outside the circle. Surrounding the ring of boxes in turn was a ring composed of cameras, microphones, sensors, and computer stations, and attached to this ring of machinery by a tangled web of cabling, power cords, and conduits in a web that interconnected everything (and retreated into the dimly shadowed recesses of the hanger besides) were a series of computers with display monitors nearly as tall as Kim herself.

Kim froze as she realized the scope of the operation, and slowly looked around the hanger, taking in all the machinery that had been installed, and the number of scientists and technicians that were either working on the machines, or standing nearby. "What the...?" she asked quietly.

As Kim stared at the installation, her eyes drawn to one detail or oddity after another, a grey haired scientist with small, circular-lensed glasses approached Dr. Director and handed her two files. Kim blinked as she looked at the man; he looked vaguely familiar, and that sense of familiarity was only heightened by the fact that aside from a difference in color scheme and a lack of gloves, his clothing looked identical to Dr. Drakken's usual mad scientist garb.

Dr. Director and the man spoke in a quiet undertone. Kim couldn't overhear their words, and after he had made some notes on a clipboard, he went back to doing something at one of the computer stands.

"What's that all about?" Kim asked as Dr. Director stepped closer.

"Dr. Williams was informing me that they're ready now, Kimberly," she answered without answering.

"Good to hear. Ready for what?"

"To confirm the prisoner's identity of course," Dr. Director commented, her tone implying that fact should have been obvious.

"Fine," Kim threw up her hands in disgust at Dr. Director's intractability on the matter. _"Let's just get this over with so we can go home,"_ she told herself. "Where is Ron?"

"The prisoner is in a holding pattern in the GJ transport network. As I mentioned, it was deemed advisable to keep him controlled while we finished setting up, and that was the obvious way to do it," she explained. "Now that they're ready, he should be making his appearance at any moment," Dr. Director pointed towards the yellow circle.

Kim blinked, remembering her own travels in the GJ network. "So he's been going around and around and around in those little tunnels all this time? Nonstop?"

"Affirmative."

"I thought you guys had a file on him. Didn't you read the restraining order?"

Dr. Director blinked her eye quizzically. "Restr... What are you talking about?"

"I guess you'll learn the same way Mr. Baggypants did," Kim winced in unconscious anticipation.

Inside the circle, the floor abruptly opened up as Ron rocketed out of the ground, his face looking distinctly bilious as he was ejected from the transport system. It was a singularly unflattering shade compared to the orange of his prison issue jumpsuit.

"Uh oh," Kim winced, covering her eyes with one hand, but unable to resist peeking over her shielding palm.

As Ron flew through the air, the role of the small boxes along the perimeter of the circle became clear. Each abruptly sprouted a pair of metallic tentacles ending in a gripper claw, and as Ron's arc brought him close to the edge of the yellow circle, they pounced, the segmented skin of the tentacles stretching as they extended menacingly. Each of Ron's limbs were abruptly snared by at least one claw, and he was effectively and efficiently trapped, held suspended above the floor of the hanger by the tentacles' grip.

Despite hanging suspended in midair, Ron continued to rock and sway with the motion of the tentacles that held him. When Kim saw his throat beginning to work convulsively, she quickly turned away and closed her eyes, her urge to peek vanishing in an instant. Ron erupted, vomiting a noisome fluid across the floor of the hanger, and partially obscuring the outer edge of the yellow circle as it splashed against the concrete.

Ignoring the eruption from their captive, the mechanical limbs continued to operate according to their programming, having successfully prevented the prisoner from leaving the confines of the circle. As Ron was returned to the center of the circle by the entrapping robotic appendages, tentacles from across the circle joined in to assist in the transport and aided in the task of lowering him safely and efficiently to the painted concrete floor - fortunately well away from his sickness' legacy.

Despite this, Ron's stomach continued to visibly convulse. Even as he was placed on the ground, Ron was heaving and gasping as he struggled to regain his breath while his body was concurrently straining to eject anything and everything it could find to expel from his already emptied stomach. Since nothing remained to find, it was a thoroughly (and literally) gut- wrenching experience.

Perhaps even worse than the sight of Ron's illness was the sound - and Kim hadn't thought to cover her ears. Microphones designed to magnify every whisper within the area for ease of interrogation caught _everything_, and the speakers surrounding the GJ operation broadcast every wet, gurgling moment and every panting breath Ron seized as he gasped for air between the shuddering bouts of nausea that racked him.

"Prone to motion sickness," Dr. Director noted as her lips curled in distaste as a particularly gruesome hacking groan erupted from the speakers. "I'll add a notation to his file."

Even though she had been anticipating this result after hearing what had happened to Ron, and had thankfully missed the full glory of the initial event by shielding her eyes, Kim was still nauseated. "You think?" she retorted.

A sudden chittering from the speakers reminded Kim that Rufus has accompanied Ron on his journey as well, bringing a sharp and quickly suppressed bark of laughter. Ron made a sound that merged both a cough and a laugh at Rufus' comment, and held his roiling stomach with both hands as he tried to quell his nausea by force of will alone. "Good one... But don't make me laugh, Rufus, please," Ron's anguished whisper pleaded. "My stomach can't take it."

Turning to Kim - since she was the only one beside Ron who had laughed at the sound of Rufus' "voice," Dr. Director asked, "What did Rufus say? Can you understand him?"

"I don't blame you, Rufus," Ron's pained whisper was broadcast throughout the hanger. "I feel crummy in the tummy, too."

Kim laughed embarrassedly, shaking her head in rueful humor. "These days I can understand Rufus most of the time - not as well as Ron, but a lot more than I used to. And I definitely got this one. He said, 'Smell my stink spray.'"

Dr. Director blinked in confusion, not understanding the reference.

"It's from 'The Fearless Ferret,'" Kim tried to explain. "The wicked White Stripe? The Ferret's fiendish foe?"

Curled up on the floor, Ron chuckled through his misery as he coughed and hacked, trying to get the taste of bile out of his mouth. "Fear not, furless friend. While we were winded and wounded, wily Wonder Weasel, with White Stripe's wicked and woeful weapon, we will..." A renewed bout of heaving brought his alliterative oration to a sudden and grinding halt as he rolled onto his knees, dry heaving continuously, and clutching his aching stomach.

As Ron knelt, heaving as his empty stomach knotted and roiled, a pink blob erupted from the top of his jumpsuit to land in a limp heap beneath the convulsing teen. A yellowish fluid trickled down out of the jumpsuit along the line of Ron's neck following the same course the blob had taken.

Freed from within the confines of Ron's clothes, and visibly as ill as Ron, Rufus unsteadily slumped across the floor, his eyes awhirl. After a moment, he staggered up onto his hind legs and lurched forward a few steps - far enough to get out from beneath the shadow of Ron's hunched body - before stopping to add his own contribution to the befouled floor.

"Lovely," Dr. Director murmured distractedly. She gestured to a nearby scientist, and when the brown haired man approached, she instructed, "Pass the word around; remember to watch for cross contamination from the naked mole rat." Turning back to Kim, Dr. Director asked, "'Mr. Baggypants'?"

"Ron had to pay for his dry cleaning," Kim explained helpfully. "And Ron's been banned for life from riding carnival rides on a full stomach."

"Wonderful," Dr. Director rolled her eye in exasperation. "All those research dollars spent on the Ron Factor project, and we still missed that."

"Convinced he's Ron, yet?" Kim asked hopefully.

"No," Dr. Director denied without batting an eye. "We're just getting started.

**XXXXoooOOOoooXXXX**

"K.P. ?"

Ron's quiet voice brought Kim back to the present as their car drove through the airport's security gate without stopping, barely slowing down enough to allow the horizontal bar to rise out of the way. "Yes, Ron?" she asked, just as quietly.

"I don't feel so good. Do you mind if I lay down?"

"Sure, Ron. No big," she answered. She helped him scoot his body around until his torso was sprawled across the back seat, his head resting on her lap. "Would you like to hear a bedtime story?" she asked teasingly.

"No thanks," Ron murmured, too dazed and sleepy to realize she wasn't serious. His eyes drifted closed, and without another word, he fell into Morpheus' embrace.

For a few minutes, Kim simply watched Ron sleep, reassuring herself that he was here, he was real - and she now had both Wade's and GJ's scientists' guarantee of that fact (even though she'd never thought to question it until Dr. Director had brought up the possibility) - and he was resting easily.

Kim hadn't wanted to believe it was possible - that Ron had been replaced, reprogrammed, or been infected to act as a modern day "Typhoid Ronnie" - but she'd eventually agreed and let them run their tests on him. Not that GJ technically _needed_ her permission, but they knew Ron well enough to know that her agreement and participation would guarantee his cooperation - and it had, even under such trying and unsettling conditions.

_"Poor Ron,"_ she thought again, then added, _"and Rufus,"_ as she felt him shift in her pocket. _"And that was just the start of his lousy evening... or morning... what time is it anyway?"_ she found herself wondering as her mind drifted back once more.

**oooOOOooo**

"I am required to be the devil's advocate in this situation, Kimberly," Dr. Director explained. "No one would be happier than I if John Doe #234 does indeed turn out to be Ronald Stoppable. But if he is not, or if he's..." she sighed, without completing the sentence, deciding not to burden Kim with the weight of knowledge of some of the possibilities she had been forced to consider. "Believe me, it's a better option to find out now, rather than later, once word of his... miraculous 'survival' has leaked to the public."

"The press is already here," Kim pointed out, while gesturing over her shoulder in the vague direction of the news crews gathered outside.

A high-pitched yelp coming from the speakers caused Dr. Director to pause, but she continued when no further distractions were immediately forthcoming. "But plausible deniability has been retained," she pointed out to Kim. "And we have total control of all tangible evidence, no matter what rumors may circulate."

"But... we're also still talking about _Ron_," Kim shot back. "He's not an assassin or... or a spy, or anything else. He's just... _Ron_."

"My brother has been sighted in Bermuda," Dr. Director explained elliptically. "His method of entry: unknown."

Ron's sudden shout caused Kim in turn to pause as he yelled, "I don't care if you are a doctor; no one infiltrates the ferret hole!"

Blinking, Kim's eyes slowly widened as she absorbed his words, before she hurriedly muttered, "Okay, moving on." Turning back to Dr. Director, she noted, "Gemini said something about Bimini." Kim frowned as she tried to remember Dr. Director's brother's parting words from what seemed an eternity before in the undersea lair. "And about you joining us soon after we were dead."

"Exactly." She smiled sardonically. "You will no doubt recall that Florida is fairly close to Bermuda. _Much_ closer, in fact, than it is to the South Pacific."

Kim blinked. "What does that have to do with..." she suddenly halted as the light began to dawn. "Ron."

"Precisely. Hence the need to prove Ron's identity," Dr. Director concluded. "Your aid will be invaluable. Help me find something to explain how and why Ron would reappear on the other side of the planet from where he was lost. Frankly, the only explanation I could think of for Ron's survival and reappearance in Florida is Sheldon's personal intervention - and my brother is not known for his... humanitarian spirit."

"This could only get worse if there were monkeys!" Ron's shout filled the sudden silence that ensued as Kim weighed Dr. Director's words. "Please, tell me there aren't going to be any monkeys!" his voice throbbed with misery.

"I... understand," Kim finally admitted. "It makes sense that you have to prove it's really him."

"So help me prove it," Dr. Director instructed as she lead Kim to a nearby chair. "You know him better than anyone. Examine the evidence, eliminate the possibilities, and tell me: is John Doe #234 _really_ Ron Stoppable?"

**XXXXoooOOOoooXXX**

Kim blinked, momentarily coming back to herself as a passing car's headlights dazzled her. She glanced down, but Ron still slumbered quietly, and her thoughts quickly drifted again.

_"I thought it was so simple. He looks like Ron, he sounds like Ron... he must be Ron. How could I have imagined...?"_

**oooOOOooo**

Dr. Williams rested his hand on a younger colleague's shoulder as he stood beside the conference table. At the prompt, the man began to type on a wireless keyboard that had rested on the floor beneath his seat.

As he typed, the monitor behind him lit up, displaying what appeared to be an x-ray image of the head and shoulder area of a human. Three hard-edged geometric shapes were visible, located in the area of the neck, and two were highlighted in red. The grey-haired Williams pointed to the highlighted shapes with the aid of a green laser pointer. "The prisoner is not a cyborg; he's definitely mostly organic. However, there _are_ two unidentified implants in the subject's body. One appears to be damaged and non-functional, but the other is intact, and appears to be operating off an internal power source."

Kim hesitantly raised her hand. "Dr. Director, I see three implants," she pointed out.

"To reiterate," Dr. Williams somewhat testily interrupted her interruption. "There are two _unidentified_ implants."

"What...?" Kim began, but fell silent as Dr. Director interrupted her in turn.

"There are two implants," Dr. Director asserted. "Any thought or speculation as to the existence or function of a hypothetical additional subcutaneous device located in the prisoner is subject to the usual rules and penalties for the dissemination of classified material."

Kim scowled, staring at the blocky rectangle on the screen that Dr. Director was telling her officially did not exist, and had implied that it was illegal to even speculate as to the function of the thing. The skin on the back of her neck crawled, and she had a sudden urge to ask her mom take an x-ray of her own neck. Making a mental note to seriously consider the matter later, she pulled out the Kimmunicator and paged Wade.

He immediately answered, and his alertness made it clear that despite the pale blue pajamas he was wearing, he hadn't returned to bed after her earlier, panicky call she'd made after first being confronted by the possibility of dealing with a faux Ron. "What up, Kim?"

"Sorry to bug you again Wade, but they're going over the findings. Ron has some implants in his neck, and GJ doesn't recognize them."

The Kimmunicator began to buzz with an almost subaural hum, and a beam of light radiated from the ruby emitter on the top. A hologram of Wade formed standing beside Kim's chair.

"This'll work better that speaking through the screen," the holo-Wade answered for himself as Kim set the Kimmunicator down on the table in front of her. "Those two implants are mine," he explained. "The larger one was destroyed when Gemini exposed Ron to an intense EM field when he was kidnapped during the Ron Factor adventure, and the second is the improved replacement I had installed shortly after his return. Those were one of the ways I reassured myself that Ron was actually Ron when he paged me from the hoverjet," he informed the gathered GJ scientists, but while addressing Kim.

The nape of Kim's neck definitely itched now. She somehow resisted the urge to scratch it - and incidentally see if she could feel anything hiding beneath the concealment of her own skin. _"Am I the only one that thinks chipping someone is ferociously unethical?"_ she wondered, her brow furrowing at the thought.

Dr. Director simply nodded at Wade's explanation without comment. Turning back to the scientists, she asked, "So he's organic. Clone?"

"There wouldn't have been time to grow one," one of the seated scientists quickly asserted.

"Unless they had a genetic sample already, and had the clone pre-grown and already prepped for insertion," a female scientist pointed out from the other end of the table. "But I don't know where or why they would have gotten a blood or tissue sample from a high school student, though... What's so funny?" she suddenly demanded, as the holo-Wade snickered, and Kim fought to hide a smile of her own.

"Ron's probably left blood samples at every villainous lair we've ever visited," Kim admitted. "Tissue samples a lot of times, too. He gets injured a lot more than I do."

"Exactly," Wade agreed. "But when I scanned his DNA on the hoverjet," he began.

"You checked his DNA?" Kim demanded.

"Naturally," Wade shrugged. "Like I said, it's a weird situation, and you were sleeping right next to him. Now, when I scanned his DNA, there were none of the normal replication errors I'd expect to find in a clone - especially an artificially aged one. He's Ron, alright."

"Hmm," Dr. Director turned back to Dr. Williams. "Your thoughts?"

The scientist seemed upset that his thunder had been stolen on the issue, but he quickly answered nonetheless. "We checked DNA extracted from sweat, tissue samples, blood samples, and the root structures of hair samples, and they all match - both with each other, and with the genetic pattern we have in our database." Behind him on the monitor, the familiar double helix shape of the genetic strand sprouted up the left hand side of the monitor as a picture of Ron appeared on the right. "While it is still possible that the prisoner is a clone of the original, the number of scars, minor injuries, identical implants, and level of knowledge about publicly unknown information that he exhibits makes it very unlikely."

"A clone wouldn't speak naked mole rat," Kim summarized.

"Among other things," Dr. Williams shrugged, but didn't dispute her cogent analysis.

"So we agree; this _is_ Ron Stoppable?" Dr. Director asked.

Kim smiled as the scientists all nodded their agreement. _"Yes!"_ She could barely restrain her enthusiasm, but it was swiftly tempered when Dr. Director moved on to the next part of the examination without a pause for celebration.

**XXXXoooOOOoooXXXX**

Kim smiled as her fingers lightly ruffled Ron's hair. That moment of joy when GJ had **finally** agreed that the prisoner was indeed Ron remained powerfully moving, even in her memory, even though it hadn't marked the end of GJ's investigation.

Ron's slumber remained peaceful as the car rolled ever closer to home, and for that, Kim's gratitude was unalloyed and total. _"Who knows what Gemini put you through?"_ she wondered wearily. _"I don't know if it would be worse to know the truth, or to never know exactly what happened. Bad enough we don't even know what that goop you were covered with was - or what it was for."_

**oooOOOooo**

"The blood samples - both from the original police analysis, and our own here, later - have all tested clean of chemical residues," Dr. Williams explained, as the relevant data scrolled across the display screen behind him. "There _were_ some anomalous proteins found," he continued, but trailed off, and gestured for one of the seated scientists to elaborate on the point.

"We think the proteins are there as a result of ingestion," a female scientist added. "Thanks to his..." she trailed off, blushing slightly, then edited herself to phrase her point more elegantly, "We were able to test the subject's - Ron's - stomach contents, and found traces of the same... material that the police reported covered him. Simply put, he swallowed some of the material, and this is the source of the proteins."

"So what is the material, Dr. Jones?" Dr. Director asked her. "The lab report from the police mostly indicates 'unknown,' and aside from a description of its properties - mainly the smell - very little else is included."

Kim nodded her agreement. Especially about the smell; it lingered exceedingly well.

"For lack of a better description," the scientist explained, "it's an organic broth, or soup. Amino acids; proteins; some odd organic esters - which are the source of the smell; some long chain molecules - the closest analogue I can think of for those are the excretions of some deep cave fungi. They're what give the fluid it's... mucilaginous texture."

Kim blinked. "He was covered in _snot_? And he ate it?"

"A substance with a mucous-like texture," Dr. Jones clarified with a slight frown, "with the closest analogue being a fungal secretion. And though the point is likely irrelevant, the ingestion was most likely not deliberate; he _was_ drenched in it, after all."

"Could it be waste product from a failed cloning experiment?" Dr. Director asked. "Possibly an oxygenated non-atmospheric breathing medium?"

"I doubt it," she mused thoughtfully, chewing on an earpiece of her glasses as she considered the matter. "There's no genetic material in the sample at all, and it doesn't conform to any of the components or remainders from any of the cloning procedures I've ever heard of - either reputable or disreputable. And it's not syntho-goo or amniotic fluid or anything similar, though it does bear some chemical similarities to the goo - though that similarity is likely coincidental rather than informative since both are organic chemical compounds."

**XXXoooOOOoooXXX**

Kim sighed, and as she breathed in, she could still smell the lingering aroma of the goo on him. It had sunk into Ron's skin, and lent him an odd scent that even Rufus - a rodent, and consequently well used to less than pleasant odors - described as "stinky." _"I can't believe I miss the rotten fruit smell,"_ she smiled sadly.

She gently took his hand in hers, and felt relieved when he neither protested nor awakened at the touch. She ran her thumb across the back of his hand while her fingertips felt the ridges of the scabs that closed the cuts on his knuckles that had been left when he sealed her in the escape pod. _"My brave pink sloth."_

**oooOOOooo**

Dr. Williams had the floor once more, and he pointed to the monitor as a series of pictures were displayed on the monitor. One after the other, they appeared, paused long enough to be considered, then were replaced by the next. Each was a photo of an injury found on Ron's body, and the slideshow repeated itself after cycling through each picture.

"We catalogued the injuries the subject exhibits," he explained, gesturing briefly over his shoulder. "Most are inconsequential. I mention this not to disparage what he must have gone through, but because the significant ones in relation to this context are absent. There are no burns on his temples, no cracks, breaks, drill holes, or markings on his skull, nor puncture or insertion wounds in either the sinuses, ears, or tear ducts.

"This unblemished state all but eliminates the possibility of a number of the most common mind control devices having been used on him. The characteristic marks left by exposure to the brain tap machine, the mind drill, the cranial drain, the cerebellum massager, the mind flayer, or the skull exploder are all absent. We can not, however, rule out exposure to the brain sifter, which leaves no obvious markings."

Kim flinched at the list of sinister devices the scientist rattled off, each sounding more evil than the next. The only consolation she felt was that each was discredited as having been used on Ron. _"Except maybe that last one,"_ she winced.

"Were there elevated levels of menaquinone in his blood?" the holo-Wade asked from his position at Kim's elbow.

"Yes, but not enough to be conclusive," Dr. Williams answered, then looked curiously at the boy's image. "Where on Earth did you learn about that?"

The hologram shrugged. "When you've infiltrated and appropriated information from as many of Dr. Drakken's computers as I have, you can pick up some interesting files. For example did you know Dr. Drakken can never remember Ron's name, but he has it programmed into his computers in the facial recognition software?"

"Interesting, but irrelevant," Dr. Director replied, then turned back to Dr. Williams. "So we can not eliminate the brain sifter. Are there any other possibilities?"

"There's always the possibility that there's something new on the market," one of the scientists noted. "Or that's been prototyped."

"But Gemini's the prime suspect, right? He buys or steals; he doesn't build his own. And I haven't seen any indications of any new products like this coming on the market," Wade pointed out. "Or even of anything similar being currently in development." When everyone looked at him curiously, he shrugged. "Ron signed me up to win a tank. I'm on the mailing list."

Kim sighed in resignation. "You too?"

Wade grinned. "I did win a gravionic uncoupler, so I don't mind too much."

"Do I want to know what that is?" Kim wondered aloud.

"Probably not," Wade smirked.

**XXXXoooOOOoooXXXX**

Kim rested her fingertips on Ron's scalp, feeling the texture of his hair between her fingers, and the slightly oily warmth of his skin as her grip on his hand momentarily tightened. _"As if the torture and the goo weren't bad enough..."_ she thought to herself, before losing herself in her memories once more.

**oooOOOooo**

"There's clear evidence that at some point Ron was submerged," Dr. Williams began. "There's dried sea salt on what's left of his mission shirt, and the remains of some bathyctena plankton were recovered from his hair.

"There is also some indication that at some point his leg was trapped," here he paused and one of the photos previously displayed - the one showing Ron's leg (and the bruise that encircled it) as well as the deep gouges around and atop it - was restored to the monitor screen. The scientist's laser pointer flashed as he highlighted the grooves etched into Ron's skin. "These scratches appear to be self inflicted. This is based on the angles of the injuries, and scrapings from beneath his fingernails, and probably reflect an attempt to escape whatever debris had pinned his leg."

Kim's eyes widened as she began to picture everything that Ron must have gone through after he had sent her to safety. _"Oh, Ron."_

**XXXXoooOOOoooXXXX**

Kim's heart raced as she tried once more - and again, without success - not to imagine what it must have been like for Ron. _"All alone... in the dark... trapped at the bottom of the sea... with the timer on the self destruct counting down... It's no wonder he's having nightmares. And that wasn't even the worst of it..."_ She shuddered as her mind wandered far afield from the government vehicle, back to the hanger.

**oooOOOooo**

Dr. Smith walked up as Dr. Director was recovering her composure, having been discomfited by the lack of solid information about what happened between the destruction of the undersea base, and Ron's discovery in Florida. "Is this a bad time?" she asked as she claimed the sole remaining vacant seat at the conference table.

"Not at all," Dr. Director answered smoothly, leaning forward in her chair. "We've been eagerly awaiting your report."

Smith pulled the red wig she wore from her head, revealing the short cropped blonde hair beneath. She ran her hands through the scant locks, fluffing them out of their slightly sweat-dampened mat, then sighed as she left it disordered and muddled. "When I first read Ronald's psyche profile, I didn't believe a word of it. I'm frankly astounded to find it was completely accurate. But that's neither here nor there."

Glancing around the table at the flock of attentive watchers, she explained, "It is clear that Ron underwent some form of psychological trauma, over and above the destruction of the undersea base. He shows distinct and measurable physiological reactions to certain stimuli as evidence of this. It's clear on the video from both the prison and the hoverjet..."

Kim blinked. _"They recorded us?"_ The back of her neck began to itch again.

"... and there were a number of similar instances in my dialogue with him, albeit not so pronounced as they were when he was with Kim. While he is repressing the details of his memories, and can not consciously recall them, his subconscious mind still remembers, and when similarities to those events are encountered, they serve as powerful triggers."

From a pocket of her lab coat, Smith pulled out a cloth and scrubbed her face. When she lowered the material, some smears of makeup were visible on her cheeks and the cloth, and the lines of her cheekbones looked subtly different - and less like Kim's own. "Do we know what happened to him?" Dr. Smith asked as she dropped the dirtied cloth on the table in front of her.

"No," Dr. Director answered sadly. "And we'd hoped that you - and Ronald - could fill in some of those blanks."

Smith shook her head, dismissing the possibility. "At this point, he simply doesn't remember - and there's definite fluctuations in his brain waves that prove he's not lying about that; he won't allow himself to remember. Ron has a surprisingly durable psyche, and he's forced himself to forget the source of the trauma as a defense mechanism. He may eventually remember what happened once the trauma is less immediate, or he may never recall it as anything other than gross details from 'nightmares.'"

"Is this... _repression_ of the memory consistent with the use of a mind sifter?" Dr. Williams asked curiously, his eyeglasses glinting as he adjusted their position atop his protuberant nose.

She considered the possibility, then slowly nodded despite the crease of uncertainty on her brow. "Possibly, given the short time window involved. With an inexperienced operator, a higher than recommended setting, and the limited exposure. It would also explain why it didn't quite work as intended."

"So what," Dr. Director asked curiously after Smith had fallen silent, "did Gemini intend, Dr. Smith?"

Smith blinked. "I'm sorry, didn't I mention that? It seems clear there was an attempt to condition Ronald to assassinate Kim Possible."

Kim gasped, her exhalation matched by the wave of shock that propagated around the table. _"Ron..."_

"Attempt? Or a success?" Dr. Director demanded, her fist clenching as it slammed against the table top.

"A failed attempt," Smith answered succinctly. She ticked off the points on her fingers as she made them, "Kim's embrace, as well as certain other kinds or loci of touch all generate definite _negative_ responses from Ronald. Those are the moments that he comes closest to recalling the forgotten past - but Ron rejects the implanted memories and instructions. 'Nightmares,' he calls them, dismissing them as unreal, despite the immediacy and clarity that the mind sifter provided them. If the conditioning had been successful, he would not evince such behavior - either to himself, or to others; they would in effect _be_ his thoughts. In addition, he was all but alone with Kim on the plane for some time - most of it while she was sleeping and helpless to defend herself; certainly long enough for him to have made _some_ attempt on her life, had Gemini been successful in his aims.

Smith shrugged as she added, "Frankly, he may not have been _deposited_ in Florida, so much as _jettisoned_ there when it became clear the mind control was not working as intended. His survival may be completely unintended and accidental - a fluke."

"Ron would never try to kill me," Kim insisted into the stunned silence that followed Smith's summary, her shock at the very idea of Ron betraying their friendship in such a way written all over her face.

"Ordinarily that would be so," Dr. Smith noted, "but if he were properly conditioned, he might well attempt to do so. If Gemini had more time, better training with his machine, or Ronald's psyche were other than it is..." she shrugged. "Who can say?"

Dr. Director looked across the expanse of the hanger to where Ronald sat on the yellow circle. "Your recommendations?" she asked as she watched Ron play with the towel that encircled his waist following a brief but very necessary washing with a hose.

"Well, obviously, don't let them attempt to reprogram him again," Smith chuckled. "With enough time, skill, effort, and the right hardware, his psychological defenses would eventually be overcome."

"Of course," Dr. Director murmured, making a note on a PDA that was completely unrelated to the... _simplistic_ advice. "More importantly, your advice for Ronald? Is he... _safe_ with Kimberly?"

"Oh, yes," she answered. "In fact, reinforcement of their friendship can only help this situation. That relationship is what made Ronald the ideal weapon to use against her, but it is also the source of his strength - and most likely how he was able to resist the reprogramming. He knows the implanted memories are impossible, and so he consciously rejects them, even if his unconscious... finds them problematic."

**XXXXoooOOOoooXXXX**

Kim sighed as Ron's face twisted in his sleep, either his recent past or a new nightmare making his sleep restless. She rested her hand against the side of his cheek, and his expression calmed as his sleep deepened, the nightmare fading at her touch.

Awake, her touch would have been a source of pain and fear to him. Asleep, he still found it a source of respite. _"Damn you Gemini,"_ she thought, the rare expletive rising in her thoughts as she watched Ron slumber. _"You'll pay for doing this to Ron. I swear it. No matter what Dr. Director does to you, I'll do worse."_

**oooOOOooo**

"The Worldwide Evil Empire has had a very bad day," Dr. Director told Kimberly somberly. "After the destruction of their undersea lair, thanks in large part to the US Navy's rapid interdiction of the area for the search and rescue operations, we managed to capture nearly the entire lair's staff, as well as a pair of rescue vessels that had been dispatched by WEE to recover the survivors."

Kim blinked in surprise. _"They never told me about that on the ship,"_ she mused, then shook off her moment of distraction. _"Not that I would have cared if they'd told me then anyway - not with Ron still missing and presumed dead."_

"After following the registration backtrail of the captured ships," Dr. Director continued, "interviewing the prisoners, and using serial numbers and analysis from some of the debris and the escape pods recovered from the destroyed lair, we were able to trace WEE's funding and procurement process back through a number of very highly placed and almost invisible facilitators and upper level personnel in the organization - and to a number of bank accounts that we were able to get frozen almost immediately.

"It may be a bit early to tell, but for the moment at least, it looks like WEE has suffered a major blow. They've lost some key backers, a great deal of their financial reserves, a major installation, and a number of henchmen. If we're lucky, this will put a damper on their operation for years to come."

A bit of vicious satisfaction gleamed in Dr. Director's eye as she concluded, "I wish I could see Sheldon's face when he gets back from his vacation and learns what we've accomplished."

**XXXXoooOOOoooXXXX**

_"No matter how much GJ curtails WEE, all I can say is Gemini had better stay out of my way,"_ Kim thought furiously. Her brow creased as she envisioned herself confronting the man who had put Ron through all of this. _"I'll show him the error of his ways..."_

But revenge wasn't truly a strong element in Kim's nature, and she soon let the waking dream of bloody vengeance - however pleasant it sounded with the delineation of Ron's traumas still fresh in her memory - fade from her mind. Thoughts of Ron's joy were much better company, and she smiled down at Ron's slumbering face.

Kim glanced out of the window. Darkened homes lined both sides of the residential street they were driving along, and the gently rolling hills they were shadowing reminded her of home. _"Almost there, I guess."_

Her gaze returned to her silent companion as her thoughts drifted. Ron had been so excited when Kim had finally been able to tell him that they were free to leave the hanger. Free to go home. _"At long last..."_

**oooOOOooo**

"Ready to go home, hero?" Kim asked Ron with a smile as she strode up to him.

Ron looked up from the yellow-painted floor of the hanger, and stared at her. He had been given an opportunity to clean himself up while GJ's scientists and Dr. Director were deciding his fate, and he looked much better than he had when he first arrived in the hanger, but he still looked worn and exhausted.

On a positive note, he had been given a set of the sensor- impregnated "Ron Factor" detection garb (that GJ had bought when they still thought that he was the hidden secret behind Kim's successes) to wear. The replacement mission clothes were much more flattering than either the jumpsuit had been - even before it had been befouled by both human and rodent - or the small towel that he'd dried himself off with after cleaning up, and then worn as a covering for a while afterward while air drying the rest of the way.

"You're not joking are you?" Ron asked Kim nervously, glancing at the twitching tentacles that weaved sinuously along the perimeter of the yellow circle.

"Nope, we're really going home," Kim answered gladly.

Ron leaped to his feet, and although he was visibly tentative, glancing around the circle that had demarcated his freedom while GJ investigated him, he didn't question her further. With only her word as reassurance, he walked out. When the tentacles made no move to attack as he crossed that line and stepped onto the unpainted, dull grey concrete, he was so overcome with glee that he cheered, and began to dance happily in place.

Dr. Director watched Ron's celebration briefly, then turned to the scientist standing beside her as he made a small exclamation of surprise. "Dr. Williams?"

"Computer analysis shows that he's performing a variant of a _sangleik_. A Norwegian folk dance," Williams explained, glancing back and forth between Ron and the computer monitor, his eyes narrowed in renewed suspicion as Dr. Director's curious eye turned his way. "There's no record of his having knowledge of such in his file," he noted aloud.

Shaking her head, Dr. Director simply turned back, watching Ron dance joyously and untroubled by the oddity. "We didn't know about Mr. Baggypants, either," she noted, and Williams was compelled to concede the point.

**xxxXXXxxx**

"We're here," Agent Kendall suddenly announced, bringing Kim back from her reverie.

Kim blinked, Ron's joyous dancing fading from her mind's eye. She turned, looking out her window and found herself gazing at Ron's family's pleasant yellow house.

Lights burned in the downstairs windows despite the lateness of the hour, and in the driveway in front of the garage was parked an orange station wagon that she recognized. "My folks are here?" she wondered aloud.

Kendall shrugged. "I don't know; I'm just glad we left the press at the airport. I'm too tired to want to deal with them right now."

Kim winced her agreement with the sentiment. "Me too."

"Let's get Prince Charming in the house, and see if you need a ride home," Kendall suddenly grinned. "Or if your carriage already awaits."

Grinning at the agent's fanciful description of Ron, Kim gently shook Ron's shoulder. "Ron?" she asked.

Ron slumbered on, unaware.

"Ron," Kim whispered more intently, but still received no reaction. "Up and at 'em, hero," she insisted, her voice rising in volume.

Groaning, Ron slowly sat up as Kim pushed up on his shoulders. "Are we there yet? And what's the mission? Drakken or Dementor? I kinda forgot, K.P. ," he asked, his mind not functioning on all cylinders quite yet.

"We're there," Kim assured him. "The mission: try to get some sleep. It's a school night."

Ron groaned theatrically as he opened the car door and climbed out. "Do I have to?" he muttered, yawning as he stretched.

"Yes," Kim instructed as she exited the car. "Unless you want Mr. Barkin to give you even _more_ extra homework."

Ron snorted, but didn't really awaken further. "GJ should investigate him sometime," he muttered, "Send that lady doctor with the cold finger. 'Perfectly normal exam,' my foot. She could give Shego some lessons in cruelty... 'Alright, Mr. B, turn your head and cough...'" his mumbles faded into inaudibility, but the scowl on his face remained perfectly clear.

Kim chuckled as she reached back into the car to collect Ron's forgotten bag and her folder. As she went back around the car to assist Ron, Agent Kendall took up a flanking position opposite Kim. They each claimed an arm, then in unison walked him up the short sidewalk to the Stoppables' front door.

Kim's gentle knock was swiftly answered, and before the open condition of the door could impinge on their consciousness, the entire party was enclosed in a smothering hug. "Hi Kimmie, hi Ron," Kim's mother smiled from the doorway.

From behind her mother, a man's voice could be heard. "Channel 8 breaking news; although Global Justice has declined to comment, these exclusive photos from the Middleton air..." The voice was abruptly silenced as the television was switched off.

"Hi, mom," Ron's muffled voice came from the center of the group hug after it had continued long enough to penetrate his half-asleep mind. "Mrs. Dr. P."

As Ron's mother pulled back from the embrace, she smiled embarrassedly at the Global Justice agent who'd been caught up in her grasp along with the teens. "Sorry," she apologized, but her happy grin didn't fade, and neither did the grip she had on the agent's blue-clad hip.

"No problem, ma'am," Agent Kendall grinned back. "Good to know they're in good hands." She chuckled good-naturedly as Ron's mother finally released her, and she stepped back - out of arm's reach of the slim blonde woman.

Both mothers chuckled as the GJ agent saluted them each in turn before heading back to the idling sedan. "Thanks for the rides," Kim called to her retreating back.

"You're very welcome," Kendall called back with a wave. "I'm glad everything worked out for you. You two take care," she instructed, before climbing back into the unmarked car and driving off.

Kim watched the car's brake lights glow into life at the end of the block as it paused for a stop sign, then let her eyes follow the receding glow of the car's headlights until it turned a corner. The car moved out of sight, her vision obstructed by the dark silhouette of an unlit house.

"Let's get him inside," Mrs. Dr. Possible instructed. Her eyes roamed quickly over her daughter and her partner, quickly checking for injuries, but finding none that looked worrisome. She claimed Agent Kendall's place by Ron's side, opposite her daughter, and took his arm, patting it reassuringly as she did.

"He can go straight up to his room," Mrs. Stoppable agreed. "He can barely stand up." She held the screen door open as the Possible women escorted Ron in, then closed the doors behind them.

Ron grew a little more animated as he entered his house, but not much. He walked more or less of his own volition, but the Possibles guided his steps as he crossed the living room heading for the stairs. "Hi, dad," he muttered, still only half-awake.

"Hello, Ronald," the tired actuary responded with a proud smile.

"He needs sleep," Ron's mom interjected, cutting him off abruptly.

Kim took advantage of the momentary pause, and dropped her folder onto a nearby endtable. She maintained her grip on Ron's bag, however.

"Of course," he agreed. "Do you need help with him?"

"We can manage," Mrs. Dr. Possible answered. "Compared to Jim and Tim, Ron's a dream to put to bed."

Mr. Dr. Possible chuckled his agreement as he rested a hand companionably on Ron's father's shoulder. "Ron's very good at sleeping," he agreed.

"I've taken him to bed before; he's easy," Kim chimed in, then blushed slightly as she reconsidered her words and realized how they could be interpreted - especially by her overly protective father. "I didn't mean..." she began, but Ron's mother forestalled an explanation.

"We know, Kimmie. But it looks like Ron's not the only one who needs to get some sleep," Mrs. Possible smiled over Ron's head at her daughter.

Still blushing, Kim helped her mom guide Ron up the stairs and into his bedroom. Once Ron sank onto his bed, she stepped aside to give his mom access.

As the mothers went to work stripping his clothes, Kim dropped Ron's bag beside his computer, then reached into her pocket and carefully pulled Rufus from his temporary nest.

"Hey!" Rufus protested sleepily.

"We're home, Rufus," Kim whispered. "We're finally home." She placed the dozing naked mole rat gently into the large plastic box on top of Ron's dresser that served as his official home. Unofficially, and more often than not, he slept beside Ron on the bed, but he still retained many of the trappings of more conventional pets - such as a bed of his own. She watched as the little pink rodent sleepily bundled himself up in the layers of cloth lining the container, forming an improvised nest from the material. He quickly sank back into sleep, and snores arose as visions of nacos and chimerritos began to dance in his head.

Kim turned back to Ron's bed, and found him already tucked in, having been too tired to protest - or notice, really - when the mothers had cooperated to strip him and ready him for bed. She smiled as Mrs. Stoppable ushered them quietly out of his room as the sound of his snores began to harmonize with Rufus'. She reached back into the room to turn off the overhead light, leaving only the reassuring glow of a night light burning by Ron's bed, then gently closed the door.

It came as a complete surprise when Kim suddenly found herself being hugged in the hallway outside Ron's bedroom. "Wha - ?" she began, startled. _"Ron's mom isn't a hugger. What's up with her?"_

"Thank you for bringing my boy home," Mrs. Stoppable whispered in Kim's ear, still hugging Kim tightly to her chest.

"It was no big, Mrs. Stoppable," Kim blushed.

"I don't just mean the car ride, dear," Ron's mother added, as she drew back from the embrace.

Kim's blush deepened. She hadn't known how to describe what she'd been feeling; what had underlain her thoughts and emotions ever since she'd been pushed into the escape capsule. With Ron's mother staring her in the face, she abruptly realized it was guilt - and many more layers of it than she'd previously recognized. Guilt for taking Ron into danger, guilt that Ron had chosen to save her instead of himself, and guilt that the worst that she'd had to endure was some boredom and fear while Ron...

"I..." she began, then restarted herself. "It's the least I could do," she said hesitantly. "Mrs. Stoppable," she began, preparing to unburden herself of everything she'd thought, feared, and hoped, over the long hours that had passed while she'd thought Ron was dead, but was cut off before she could even begin the process.

"I know what you're going to say. But don't. You're the best thing in my son's life, and I don't know what he'd do without you." She smiled, the expression a little sad, a little proud. "You do great things, and thanks to you, so does my boy," she explained. "You should be proud of that. I am."

"I'm proud of you both, too, Kimmie," Kim's mom added, smiling supportively.

Despite the reassurances, Kim actually felt her guilt deepen as she remembered how she had wanted to shirk the responsibility of telling them that Ron was dead. "But I..." she began, then flushed, halting awkwardly mid-sentence.

"Do I worry? Of course. Do I sometimes wish the two of you spent more time babysitting and finding lost puppies and less fighting... ?" Mrs. Stoppable trailed off, trying to think of the appropriate word.

"Freaks?" Kim suggested.

She shrugged, accepting the term, "Of course I do. But I know my son. And while he is prone to a number of bad habits, when he's with you, he rises above them. I sometimes think that you're the template Ron uses when he tries to be a mensch - and the only reason he bothers. Even if Doctor Director hadn't called us to explain things, I couldn't be upset with you."

Kim blushed, her guilt rising faster and more intensely than the color in her cheeks. She felt entirely unworthy of the accolades that were being showered upon her, but couldn't think of how to dismiss them without being insulting or belittling of what Ron had done.

At the same time, she felt guiltily pleased and relieved that Ron's mother wasn't going to forbid him from accompanying her on missions. _"Even I have to admit it; it would be the rational choice. The **normal** choice."_ The thought naturally reminded her of Ron's motto, which brought a small smile to her lips despite her mixed emotions.

"You need to rest now, too, but think about what I said, you hear me?" Mrs. Stoppable told Kim, and Kim's mother nodded her agreement.

"We do need to get back," Mrs. Possible awkwardly admitted. "The sitter is nearly an hour past when we anticipated her next panicked call about what Jim and Tim have done would be. I'm getting a little worried for her."

Kim blinked, her total surprise momentarily overshadowing both her guilt and her embarrassment. "Where did you find a sitter willing to put up with the tweebs? And how'd you convince the two of them to stay quiet long enough for her to be stuck with them while you slipped out the door?"

Mrs. Dr. Possible chuckled as she wrapped an arm around Kim's shoulders in a one-armed sideways hug. "She's new in town, and hadn't heard of them yet. And to be blunt, I bribed them. By the way, we're having dinner at J.P. Bearymore's on Friday."

"Great, burnt pizza smell," Kim mumbled, but she found herself enormously comforted as they walked down the stairs nonetheless. Life changing events were much less confounding with a mother's love and support bolstering you.

**xxxXXXxxx**

to be continued...

**Notes:** Whew... this update was a long time coming... This one required multiple rewrites, numerous editing passes, and I'm still not entirely happy with it. Hopefully the interspersed flashback segments weren't too jarring. I may eventually go back and rewrite it, but for now, I'll let it stand so that I can get back to forwarding the main plot of the piece.

I will be posting the fruits of some of the earlier drafts of this chapter as a chapter of "The Shape of Things Yet to Come," which will contain both deleted segments, and earlier versions of existing scenes, so if you're interested in seeing some of the 50-75 odd pages that I scrapped before writing this version of this chapter, look there. I'm one of those people who watch all the special features on DVDs, so think of that as being similar in intent.

Hopefully you enjoyed this, and R&R!


	11. To bring the pieces back together

xxXXxx

**Chapter 11: To bring the pieces back together**

His eyes wide and his hair dishevelled, Ron Stoppable screamed as he swung the side door to Middleton High shut. It closed with a pneumatic sigh and a muted clank as the latch clicked against the receiver inset into the door frame, but that reassuring noise was insufficient surety for the frightened teen. He leaned against the door, bracing his legs against the dusty tile floor for better leverage, seeking to hold the door more securely than the simple locking mechanism could.

A few people in the hallway at this hour of the morning - bare minutes after the doors had been unlocked at 7:30 - watched Ron's inexplicable behavior (most attributing it simply to Ron being Ron) curiously, but Ron ignored them and all other distractions as he panted for breath, his pale complexion flushed and blotchy from his exertions. He braced himself more securely, wincing as the sound of talons scratching against the concrete walkway slowly grew louder and louder... and closer and closer...

Claws skittered across the doorjamb, seeking purchase on the brick, polished stone, and metal surrounding the doorway to no avail. As though enraged at being stymied by the unyielding barrier Ron held closed, a dull thump resounded as a heavy body was flung against the exterior.

The door pushed against Ron's back as the barrier was tested. With the aid of Ron's reinforcement, the entry proved sturdy enough to resist the impact without yielding to the assault.

Ron could hear a snuffling sound, as of inhuman nostrils scenting the air, through the dubious protection offered by the sealed door. Hearing this, his panting breath grew even more ragged as the thudding of his heartbeat echoed hollowly in his ears.

With the sound of his beating heart and the blood rushing madly through his veins filling his ears, Ron's panic grew. His bodily noises were not nearly loud enough to drown out the small sounds made by the creature that continued to lurk beyond the walls of the school, seeking a manner of entry - and a way to reach the frightened teen cowering within.

Flinching, Ron closed his eyes as he braced himself more forcefully as another impact thudded against the door. With his body braced at a sharper angle, the leverage was greater, and the door barely moved at the new assault upon the doorway.

For a moment, there was silence, both within and without, and Ron dared to hope that the attack was finally over. Maybe the creature that had hounded him, dogging his steps all the way from home, had finally given up the chase - or so he silently hoped and prayed.

"Rarf! Arf! Yark!" Snarling and snapping, the white- flecked black muzzle of a German shepherd dripped with saliva and froth as it suddenly appeared in the window above Ron's flinching form. The terrifying avatar of canine ferocity was followed almost immediately by the rest of the animal's front half as it rose onto its hind legs to peer into the school.

The dog was massive, its head nearly level with Ron's as he jerked upright and away from the vision of rage. The animal's liquid brown eyes glinted menacingly even as the forepaws slid down the window glass as it lost its precarious balance. The dog dropped from sight beneath the door's window, but Ron knew the disappearance was only an illusion.

"No... no... no..." Ron pleaded quietly, more as an unconscious prayer than from any real hope of the dog's obedience to his instructions. "Nice puppy... You don't want to eat me... Good puppy. Nice puppy..."

"What are you doing Ron?" Kim asked as she walked up beside her cringing friend. Peering through the window, she blinked as the dog continued to work itself into a frenzy outside the door. "Is that Mr. Mathers' dog?"

"I'm not doing anything - except running for my life! And I didn't do anything to make it mad, either!" Ron protested, torn between the conflicting urges to flee down the hallway and brace himself against the door once more. "Mom got me up, gave me this speech about how proud she was of me, then said to hurry so I wouldn't be late for school." Ron pointed through the window with one trembling finger, "I didn't even make it to the end of the block before Fido there was all over me. I barely got away with my life! I knew I should have ridden my scooter this morning..." he mumbled.

"Weird," Kim admitted, peering down at an angle through the door's window in attempt to see the dog. The canine's hind end was barely visible as it moved back and forth along the threshold, seeking entry. It showed no sign of leaving - nor of even moving away from the door, though it must have been clear that the prey had successfully found a safe haven. "He really doesn't like you for some reason."

"Yeah," Ron flinched as the dog howled mournfully outside the door, the lifted muzzle rising into visual range and showing every one of the fangs it possessed through the window. "I kind of noticed that when he jumped that fence and started chasing me." Ron still looked frazzled, but he was visibly calming as he caught his breath and the door continued to hold - securing the school (and him) against the dog's frenzy. "I don't get it, though - he likes me... or at least he used to."

"Well, at least you're safe now," Kim soothed. She squeezed his shoulder where the black of his sleeve joined with the faded white fabric of the trunk of his shirt as he slowly straightened.

Still peering fearfully at the door that was all that protected him from the maddened canine, Ron didn't appear reassured by her attempt at comforting. "Yeah," he muttered under his breath.

Kim smiled as she let her hand fall away from his shoulder. She was still so thrilled by the fact of her Mad Dog's survival that not even a real mad dog could dampen her good mood this morning.

The shepherd abruptly leaped up onto the door again, claws scrabbling against the glass as the powerful jaws snapped inches away from Ron's face. Ron yelped and fell back a few steps, retreating from the door and the crazed canine lurking beyond the doorway.

"Come on," Kim instructed, as she took Ron by the hand and drew him further away from the door. "We can get Wade to call animal control when we hit the lockers."

"Sure thing, K.P." Ron agreed, reluctant to turn his gaze away from the smear of slobber that now defaced the glass. The sounds the dog's nails continued to make while it was clawing at the door trying to get in weren't very reassuring either. "I'm right behind you."

Ron let her pull him backwards for a few steps, then finally turned and walked beside her as the animal noises faded behind them. Kim's hand released his as they passed a knot of gossiping students and he fell into step with her, easily keeping pace with her despite his moseying amble.

"So your mom woke you early, too?" Kim asked curiously as she glanced over her shoulder at her friend.

Ron sank his fingers into his hair and scratched furiously for a moment, messing his hairdo even more than it had previously been as he readjusted his mental state, trying to convince himself that he was really safe. "Yep. She said Dr. Director said I should get back to a normal schedule ASAP, and mom took her _way_ too seriously. After what I went through with all those doctors last night, I should have at least been able to sleep in for **one** morning."

"Mom said pretty much the same to me," Kim nodded. She reached out, and gently touched his forearm, unconsciously reassuring herself that he was really here.

"What's with the touchy thing again?" Ron asked, stepping away from her as he looked at her with an odd expression on his face. "I thought you got over that last night."

Kim chuckled at the look on his face, struck by the fact that his expression was even weirder than the file photo the national news had used this morning while announcing his survival. "Not... entirely. You were sleeping on my lap, so it wasn't like... But really, it's no big. I just... It's good that you're here," she blushed slightly as she hesitantly tried to explain herself. After the long hours of believing him dead, she felt like the warmth of his skin, and the reassurance of flesh on flesh was the only way to really _feel_ confident - no matter how much her logic insisted that he was safe and she was being silly - that his survival wasn't some kind of comforting dream or delusion created by her stressed mind to ease her grief. Not that she could clarify her emotions and thoughts well enough to summarize or explain them that simply to _him_, but in the solitude of her own mind, she knew how she felt... Sort of.

Ron shrugged, then he flinched back as Tara sighed in his direction before ducking back into a classroom, her pale cheeks infused with a delicate rose. "Did you see that?" he asked, turning to walk backwards so he could watch the door Tara had fled through.

"See what?" Kim replied.

After a beat, Ron shook his head as the doorway remained empty. "Nothing. I must have been seeing things."

Ron's eyes widened in shock after he'd walked barely a score more steps past the spot of the strange encounter. Amelia's younger sister Amber - who was not nearly as dominant in the social hierarchy despite being nearly as pretty as her now graduated sister had been - sighed deeply in his direction. She then rushed off down the hallway, clutching her schoolbooks to her chest and keeping her face averted to avoid meeting his gaze. Ron rubbed his eyes, and when he looked up, Amber was nowhere to be seen. "I'm imagining things. Gotta be."

"What?" Kim asked again, her pace slowing as she looked over her shoulder at Ron.

"I..." Ron began, then fell silent as he tried to think of how to explain the weirdness. "Nah, it's no big," Ron finally mumbled, grinning nervously.

"Hmm..." Kim frowned slightly, but let it pass. She started walking again and Ron hurried to catch up. "Did you happen to catch the news this morning?" she asked, changing the subject.

"Nope," Ron denied, sauntering along in her wake. "Mom rushed me too much. Why?"

Kim's lips creased into a teasing smile. "No big. They just happened to mention you, that's all."

"Cool," Ron grinned, then his smile faded as a thought struck him. "Did they get my name right?"

Shrugging, Kim had to concede, "Well, one of the networks did. Once. But then they corrected themselves with a different name. But it's the thought that counts," she pointed out, smiling reassuringly.

Ron shrugged in return as Kim opened her locker. He leaned against the nearby bank of lockers as he replied, "I guess. It's not that difficult a name. Ron. Ron Stoppable. I don't know why nobody ever seems to get it right. Well, except for Señor Senior, Senior. He may be a villain, but he definitely has _class_."

Kim's smile was a testament of her agreement with him, but she continued in her original vein, not letting Ron divert her from her original intent. "Well, all of the networks did get the part about you being a hero right," she pointed out, "even if the name wasn't spot on. Partner."

Ron blinked. "I didn't do anything you don't do... did... have done... daily did... didn't not do... didn't done..." he stammered, trying to untangle both his thought and the knot in his tongue.

He might have continued twisting and contorting his words, but a blonde cheerleader - Jennifer - chose that moment to walk up to the loitering duo. "Hi, Kim," she paused to smile cheerily, then walked away.

The incident might have been mistaken for a simple greeting to the captain of the squad, but for one thing. As she left, Jennifer let her fingers trail lightly across Ron's forearm where it peeked from beneath the cover of his sleeve. "Ron..." she drawled, letting her touch linger on his arm as his name lingered on her lips.

His eyes widening, Ron fell silent as he watched the blonde saunter away, her hips swaying hypnotically. "Tell me I didn't just imagine that?" he asked intently. His gaze was attracted to the swishing motion of her skirt like iron filings to a lodestone.

After a moment's enraptured study, Ron turned away, and despite his general immunity to embarrassment, his cheeks held a hint of pink as he looked at the ceiling, at the bank of lockers, at Kim... Pretty much everywhere except after the retreating cheerleader, really.

"You didn't imagine that," Kim agreed quietly, watching Jennifer's retreating form with a bit of a frown. After she passed from sight, Kim turned back to her locker and finished selecting her books for the morning classes.

"But... but..." Ron stammered.

"Maybe she's just now seeing in you something I've seen all along," Kim informed him with a small grin.

Ron's brow furrowed as he tried to unravel the meaning of her words. Finally deciding it was too complicated for this early in the morning, he let it pass from his thoughts.

He watched Kim as she dug through her bag before pulling out a folder that looked vaguely familiar. "So what's that?" he asked.

Kim's grin held more than a hint of teasing. "Not much. Just an addition to my 'Most Wanted' collection," she answered.

As Ron watched, Kim opened the folder and withdrew a white, rectangular (_"Paper? Picture? Card?"_ he wondered) **something** before closing the folder and stowing it behind the darkened monitor of the computer Wade had installed in her locker. "Collection?" he asked. Dropping his voice so he couldn't be overheard, he whispered, "Is it the new CuddleBuddy catalog from Dy?"

Unable to suppress a giggle, Kim didn't answer as she tore off four strips of tape from a dispenser located in the bottom of her locker, arranging them in a fluttering row along the lower edge of the open door in preparation for their impending use. "Don't be silly," she admonished with a teasing grin.

She held the rectangular thing against the inside of her locker door, her hand shielding it from sight so that it remained unidentifiable. With her free hand, Kim used the tape strips she'd readied to secure it to the inside of the door.

"So... If it's not that, what _is_ it?" Ron wondered aloud, waiting for Kim to reveal the new addition to her locker décor.

Kim pulled her hand away from the rectangle, and Ron suddenly found himself staring into his own eyes - his dazed, unfocused, glassy eyes. "Wha...?" he stammered. Ron's booking photo - an 8 by 10 color glossy photo of him in all his incoherent glory from Florida - now shared pride of place on Kim's locker door right next to Shego's, mounted directly below Doctor Drakken's.

"Aw, Kim," Ron protested, glancing around to make sure no one else could see the new decoration.

"I think it looks good," Kim chuckled. "Now I'll always remember Ron's Big Day Take 2. I couldn't save the world without you, hero - and I don't want you to ever forget that, either."

Ron blanched. "Don't even joke about that, K.P. Ix-nay on the on-Ray's ig-bay ay-day... ay... ing... thay..." Ron blinked as he tried to convert the next word into pig Latin, but then changed his mind when the syllables sounded incoherent even to him. "_Thing_," he finished instead. "My street cred took a serious nose dive after that film festival."

"What street cred?" Kim wondered briefly, then shook off the moment of distraction. "Never mind. Now come along. We don't want to be late for class," she grinned as she swung the locker closed and headed down the hall.

"Aww," Ron whined, but obediently followed along behind her. "Are we forgetting something?" he wondered aloud as he walked, but quickly abandoned the idle thought.

xxxXXXxxx

Ron plopped down onto his unpadded chair and sighed as he pulled his history book out of the shadowed depths of his backpack. "This is turning out to be a majorly freaky day," he announced to the world in general.

He didn't anticipate a response, so when he actually received one it tossed his equilibrium straight out of the window. "Why?"

Startled, Ron jumped in his chair, thumping his knees against the underside of his desk. "Ouch," he complained, then turned to face the source of the response that had taken him completely by surprise. "Zita?" he asked, his eyes widening.

"Hi, Rron," Zita Flores grinned as she gave his name a Spanish trill.

For some reason, a muscle beneath his left eye began to twitch at her pronunciation of his name. "What are you doing sitting way back here? Don't you sit behind Jim?" he asked, gesturing vaguely in the appropriate direction.

He found something about the smile she wore on her face to be deeply disturbing. Even though they'd sort of remained friends after their ill-omened dating days, Ron felt the day was already shaping up to be more than weird enough without voluntarily adding to it. _"No need to dive into **those** waters again."_

"I thought I'd sit behind _you_ today," she answered with a smile. "You don't mind, do you Rron?" she asked, as her grin broadened and her eyes gleamed.

_"You'd never guess she plays a she-warrior,"_ Ron thought silently. "Oh, no, not at all," Ron nervously held up his hands in a posture of surrender as he slowly turned in his seat back towards the front of the class. _"Today's not just freaky - it's way **diffreaky**,"_ Ron amended his earlier comment silently.

Kim slid into her usual seat beside Ron and beamed cheerfully at him for a moment before pulling out her school books. Unconsciously, she reached over and patted his arm before arranging her papers on her desk.

Ron twitched as Zita leaned forward in her seat and whispered in his ear, "I heard about what you did on the news this morning, Rron. I'm _so_ very proud of you." Her breath caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stand up as it washed over his skin. "It was an action worthy of the Tunnel Lord himself."

Ron shuddered, but instead of calming down, the situation quickly grew even more bizarre. When Mrs. Barkin - no relation - came into the classroom, she beamed proudly at Ron. She even patted his shoulder before returning to the front of the class to start the day's lecture.

Ron hadn't done the homework, but Mrs. Barkin waved off his feeble attempts to excuse himself when she asked the class to hand their assignments in - despite the frequent lectures about his "irresponsibility" that she'd given him in the past for that very behavior. _"What's up with her?"_ he wondered. _"Has the world gone insane when I wasn't looking?"_

Between the teacher's weirdly forgiving mood, Kim's infrequent but recurring touches to his arm (invariably accompanied by a proud smile), and Zita's just as recurring whispers in his ear (her lips brushing against his skin in what was _almost_ a kiss), Ron was thoroughly frazzled by the time the bell rang. He visibly twitched at each weird happening, and his eyes grew progressively wider and wilder.

As soon as the class ended, Ron was out of his seat like a shot and running for the door with books in hand - not sparing even the few seconds needed to stow them in his backpack before leaving. He dashed out the door and was gone in a flash before the tintinnabulation of the bells had faded.

"Ron!" Kim and Zita both protested his sudden disappearance, but Ron was already long gone, vanished into the swirling tide of students heading for the next class period.

xxxXXXxxx

"Stoppable!"

Startled, Ron jumped, and his head crashed into a lightbulb dangling from the bare cement ceiling of the service corridor, causing it to explode with a fizzling pop and sending the cord it had been suspended from swinging back and forth. "Gah, Mr. B!" Ron yelped, frantically brushing fragments of heated glass out of his hair as he landed poorly and stumbled backwards - away from both the crazily swinging fixture and Mr. Barkin.

A tiny chorus of tinkling crunching arose as the debris fell to the floor, and Ron danced awkwardly as he tried both to keep the shattered fragments of bulb out of his eyes, and to keep from stepping on the fallen pieces. He stepped awkwardly back a few more paces, out of the debris field and away from the fluttering cord that showed no signs of stopping its wild and random reverberations.

Steve Barkin scowled as he stepped forward, his boots crushing the debris uncaringly underfoot with a muffled crunch. He rested his fists on his hips and leaned menacingly forward, bringing his face close to his most problematic student's. "This is a restricted area, Stoppable. And you've not only violated this space, you've both willfully damaged school property and compromised the lighting."

"It was just a light bulb," Ron protested, shrinking back from the looming administrator. "And you startled me."

"Are you questioning my authority, Stoppable?" Mr. Barkin asked, his voice suspiciously calm and even.

"Oh, no, Mr. Barkin," Ron lifted his hands and shook his head furiously, leaning away from the air of menace that surrounded the older man. "I would _never_ even think of doing that."

"How did you get in here, anyway?" Mr. Barkin demanded. "The doors lock automatically, and only the faculty have keys." He eyed Ron suspiciously, but received no answer.

Ron chuckled nervously and tried not to look towards the dust stains on his pants that he'd acquired while infiltrating the ventilation system. "Um..." he stammered, trying to think of an answer that wouldn't inflame Barkin's ire any further.

Mr. Barkin sniffed exaggeratedly, then noted, "I don't smell smoke. It's a filthy habit, but if you're willing to eat at Bueno Nacho, I wouldn't put _any_ pollution of your body past you."

"Mr. B, I can't believe you'd think so poorly of me," Ron protested. "I wouldn't do something like that."

"Then why _are_ you in here?" Mr. Barkin asked smoothly, a smile creasing his lips as Ron fell into his trap.

"I just... had to get away from everyone," Ron winced as Mr. Barkin leaned still closer - close enough for Ron to see the pores in his skin, and for his eyes to cross as they tried to meet his burning gaze.

"Get away, Stoppable?" he demanded, his voice growing louder with every syllable. "From what? Why?"

"..." Ron mumbled, far too quietly to be heard as he shrank back.

"Speak up, man!" Mr. Barkin barked.

"... looking at me funny..." Ron mumbled a little louder.

"I won't ask you again," Mr. Barkin warned. "Answer me!" he insisted.

**"Girls are looking at me funny!"** Ron shouted. **"And it's freaking me out!"**

Mr. Barkin blinked in surprise. "You're the last one who should be casting aspersions at people for giving funny looks, Stoppable," he pointed out, and his tone was almost mild. It rapidly regained its heat as he added, "And what's the sudden problem with girls, Stoppable? I know for a fact you watched the district mandated filmstrips, and after your last collision with district policy, I'd have thought..."

"You don't understand, Mr. B," Ron moaned, cutting off Barkin's commentary. "You just don't get it. For the love of Cheese, man," Ron wailed, "Bonnie Rockwaller smiled at me. She _smiled_. At **_me_**!"

Raising an eyebrow, Mr. Barkin gauged Ron's paranoia and confusion. "I watch the news, Stoppable. Did you or did you not save Possible's life on your last mission, at what was most likely to be the expense of your own?" he asked mildly.

"What's that got to do with anything?" Ron asked, confused by the seeming non sequitur.

Shaking his head in dismay, Mr. Barkin straightened his back as he bemoaned, "Stoppable, for as long as I've known you - and even as far back as your permanent record goes - there's been one consistent comment from every faculty member and administrator you've had dealings with. Do you know what it is?"

"'Prone to sleeping in class' ?" Ron scratched his head, dislodging a small splinter of glass from against his scalp.

"Nice try. But that one's a distant second to: 'Fails to live up to his potential,'" Mr. Barkin explained evenly.

"Oh. Yeah. Potential Boy; that's me," Ron admitted. "I've heard that one before."

"And yet, here we are," Mr. Barkin pointed out. "You see, Stoppable, it's moments like _this_, those rare moments when you reveal how you _could_ be, that are one of the few times that people actually reassess how you _are_ - or how they perceive you," he explained.

Ron frowned in obvious confusion. "I don't get it," Ron confessed.

Mr. Barkin sighed heavily. "It's almost time for the bell to ring. If you weren't going to be late for class, I'd try to make it sink through that thick skull of yours. But believe me, you'll have plenty of time in detention to think about it later."

"But I don't have..." Ron trailed off. "Detention?" he whimpered.

"Oh yes," Mr. Barkin smiled slowly. "Detention, extra homework... And that's just the beginning."

"C'mon, Mr. B," Ron pleaded. "Have a heart."

"Violation of a restricted area, flagrant desecration of school district property," his hand swept horizontally, indicating the debris field as he continued, "...littering, vandalism..." he trailed off as his smile grew almost beatific. "Need I continue?"

"No," Ron hung his head.

"Good. I'll see you in room 12 after school," Mr. Barkin noted with satisfaction. "And I'll have _hours_ to think of a suitable punishment for your... infractions. _Now get to class!_" he barked.

Ron fled down the service tunnel, dodging conduits and cabling as he fled the administrator's wrath. Oddly, he felt reassured by the encounter. _"In a world gone mad, you can rely on Mr. Barkin to be a constant."_

"I'll deal with him later. I have to see if there's any truth about those reports of a mad dog prowling around outside," Mr. Barkin reminded himself as he eyed Ron's wild retreat balefully.

xxXXxx

A few hours later, Ron stared down at the contents of his lunch tray, despondently stirring the glop in the main compartment. _"Why me?"_ he wondered silently as Penny - she of the beauteous eyes - smiled at him as she walked past. After four hours of the weirdness, he was almost desensitized to it - but only almost.

"It's the man of the hour."

Looking up from his uneaten - if not untouched - lunch, Ron grinned weakly at Felix as he rolled up to the end of the table. "Yo-ha, bro-ha."

Felix grinned as Kim and Monique joined Ron at the table. "Nice job, Ron," he added as they sat down. "I heard all about it on the news this morning."

"I don't know why everyone's making such a big deal out of this," Ron muttered under his breath.

Kim absent-mindedly patted Ron's forearm before opening her milk carton. "My hero," she praised, and while her voice was leavened with irony and good humor, there was also the simple acknowledgement of truth in her words.

Ron's answering grin was feeble, but heartfelt. "No big, K.P."

Monique beamed at Ron. "You did good, kid," she added her praise before starting to peel an orange.

Ron twitched as a girl he didn't even know waved at him from across the cafeteria. "I..." he began, but broke off as the Kimmunicator caroled from Kim's pocket.

Kim pulled out the beeping device, and hit a button. "What's the sitch, Wade?" she asked.

"No sitch," Wade admitted with a yawn as he appeared on the viewscreen. "Just checking in. I just woke up and wanted to see how you guys were doing after everything that happened yesterday."

"Other than some ferocious jet lag? I'm not doing too bad," Kim admitted. Looking over the top of the device, she asked, "How about you, Ron?"

Ron slumped in his seat as the captain of the girls' basketball team - an amazonian brunette that was nearly as tall as Big Mike - ruffled his hair as she walked by. "Hi, Ron," she giggled before retreating with her friends.

"I'm a little freaked out," he admitted, his head falling to rest on the table beside his lunch tray. "Girls are looking at me funny, Kim won't stop touching me..."

Kim chuckled embarrassedly as she awkwardly drew her hand away from Ron before her fingers could reach him. "It's really no big," she muttered to herself.

"... then there was that weird stuff about my 'potential' Mr. B was talking about..." The twitch beneath his eye was back in force as he cried out to the heavens, "Why me?"

"I don't know about the Kim touching you thing," Monique answered calmly, "but the rest is easy enough to understand."

"Oh?" Wade's comment was echoed by everyone else at the table - aside from Kim, who was too distracted by all the talk about "touching" to really follow the thread of the conversation.

"Sure," Monique slowly chewed a wedge of her orange, then smiled angelically as she swallowed. "Ron? You're Dusty," she explained elliptically before popping another piece of her orange into her mouth.

"I'm... dusty?" Ron wondered aloud, glancing down at the streaks of dirt on his pants. _"But all this started before I ever crawled into the vents."_ Regardless, he took a napkin and scrubbed desultorily at his cheeks in an attempt to remove some of the grime.

As the others at the table looked back and forth, trying to see if _anyone_ had been enlightened by her comment, Monique simply continued to eat her lunch. She was obviously enjoying the confusion sown by her explanation.

"Dirty? Often. Dishevelled? Absolutely. Dramatic? Probably," Kim slowly announced, staring at Ron's confused face. "Dusty? Frankly I don't see how that explains anything," she asked, her eyes taking in the odd smears and streaks that covered Ron despite his attempted clean up, "even if it _is_ true."

Monique shook her head. "Kim, Kim, Kim. You should know better. You and everybody else are just confusing poor Ron with your subtlety. It's wasted on the brave lad. Forget psychology. Forget sociology. Forget the smiles, touches, and everything else and just talk to the boy in a language he understands. He's Dusty," Monique confirmed, gesturing with a thumb towards the befuddled Ron. "I have an older brother. Trust me, I speak Gamer."

Kim remained confused, but a sudden gasp from the Kimmunicator drew her attention. "Gamer? Wha...? Wait, what is it, Wade?"

"_Dusty_..." Wade breathed, as though he had been granted the gift of divine enlightenment.

From the end of the table, Felix smacked the butt of his palm against his forehead. "Of course, _Dusty_..."

Kim remained unenlightened, but Ron suddenly sat up straight as though he'd been struck by lightning, his forgotten napkin abruptly falling from suddenly nerveless fingers. "_Dusty_... I'm Dusty! How cool is that?"

"If someone doesn't tell me what this is all about..." Kim began.

Before she could finish the thought - or the threat - Wade interjected reverently, "The final cut scene. Zombie Mayhem 2."

Felix picked up the explanation, "The hero, Dusty, jumps into the vortex leading to the Dimension of the Dead at the end of the game, closing it forever. He saves Victoria - and the world - from the undead menace."

"At least until Zombie Mayhem 3," Monique clarified, "when Victoria takes over the undead killing duties in a much skimpier outfit. Still, even I have to admit it was a ferociously cool moment. My brother says it's the best part of the series, and it does redeem some of the more gratuitous parts of the game: the hero sacrificing himself to save her without hope of survival or reward in an act of utter selflessness. It even won a couple of industry awards."

Ron was twitching, rocking up and down in a moment of sheer, unadulterated gamer bliss. "Who cares if I'm freaked out?" he realized, his eyes glazing over as he pictured himself as the star of the scene as it played out before his mind's eye. "I'm Dusty..." After being struck by a thought, he snapped out of his moment of introspection. "Hey Wade, since I'm Dusty, can I get a chainsaw?"

"Sorry, Ron," Wade grinned. "I offered to make a laser chainsaw once after Rufus missed a mission and you guys couldn't get into a vent, but Kim vetoed the idea."

"What?" Ron spun and demanded, "Why?" he whined.

"Why do you think? Because you'd cut off a limb inside of a week," Kim answered, rolling her eyes. "Wade? In case you're wondering, the answer's still thanks, but no thanks."

"Aw, but I'm _Dusty_..." Ron grumped.

Kim chuckled, but didn't relent in her conviction. _"I'll have to remember to thank Monique later,"_ she thought. _"Ron's looking a lot more normal now that he's distracted."_

"Remind me later, and I'll mock one up for you for Halloween, Ron," Wade offered as a consolation prize. "You can go as a matching pair if you can convince Kim to dress as Vi..." he suddenly fell silent as he began typing on a keyboard. "We've got a hit on the website. GJ wants to know if you're up to taking down Frugal Lucre, Kim."

"Yes!" Ron cheered, one fist shooting high into the air in exultation.

"I guess so," Kim eyed Ron curiously as he continued to celebrate. "What's got you so excited?" she asked. "It's just Frugal Lucre."

"Being on a mission means I get to miss detention," Ron explained with a grin.

"Ron!" Kim demanded. "We've only been back at school for a few hours; how could you possibly have detention already?"

"Who cares?" Ron evaded. "Nothing can harsh this mellood! I'm Dusty!" he proclaimed. Abandoning his lunch, he stood, and after striking a "heroic" pose (one taken directly from the game) that sent Monique into a fit of giggles, he hurried across the lunch room.

"Uh oh," Felix muttered, dropping his face into the comforting shield of his hands. "I've got a bad feeling about this..."

"'Uh oh' what?" Kim asked.

"Ron's not actually doing the dialogue is he?" Monique asked. At Felix's weary nod, she joined him in burying her face in her hands. "That boy..." she muttered.

"Someone want to fill me in?" Kim asked, glancing between the two and the Kimmunicator, hoping to learn what was so disturbing.

"The Zombie Mayhem games were originally created and released in Japan," Wade explained, interlacing his fingers and cracking his knuckles. "The cinematics in the US releases are new, but the rest of the game is just a translation of the original."

"A _bad_ translation," Monique clarified.

"How bad could it be?" Kim wondered aloud.

"'All your base are belong to us' bad," Felix added. "And some of the lines..." he winced as across the lunch room, Penny rose from her seat and slapped Ron, the retort audible even over the buzz of conversation in the cafeteria.

"He didn't use the 'King' line did he?" Monique asked rhetorically, wincing at Felix's affirmative shrug. "That boy needs a full time minder," Monique commented sadly.

"He's got one," Wade asserted. Kim started to smile, but it shifted to a frown as he added, "But Rufus must have slept in today. Anyway, your ride will be out front in about a half hour, Kim. Let 'Dusty' know, ok?"

"Will do, Wade." Kim thanked him and tucked away the Kimmunicator.

Undeterred by Penny's reaction to his attempt to emulate the hero of his favorite video game, Ron soon drove Jennifer, Bonnie, and a horde of others from the cafeteria. Kim winced as she watched Ron slowly walk back to the table, utterly and totally defeated on the lists of love, and bearing the pink silhouette of a hand print branded on one cheek like a scarlet letter. "Let's go, hero," she ordered, but with a soothing (she hoped) tone to her voice.

"I just don't understand girls," Ron bemoaned aloud as Kim dragged his unresisting form away from the site of his inglorious defeat.

"No kidding," Kim rolled her eyes. _"Good thing Zita's not here; she'd probably enjoy Ron's act."_

xxXXxx

Kim looked out the window of the small private jet and gazed upon the constellations of streetlights gleaming across the landscape far below. As the plane entered a cloudbank, hiding the scenery from view, she leaned back in her seat and tried to relax. _"Long day,"_ she noted to herself.

The plane - the personal conveyance of the CEO of Def Teen Records - was luxurious; the seats were plush, and the cabin air was climate conditioned so as to be perfect. Despite the comfort of the travel, Kim still couldn't seem to relax. _"I don't know what's wrong with me lately."_

She clicked a button on a small remote control unit, and a plasma TV mounted on the bulkhead at the front of the cabin hummed into life. Block green letters appeared across the bottom of the blank, black screen, proclaiming, "Scanning." After a moment's delay, a man in a red shirt and a white hat appeared on the television as the system locked onto a broadcast coming from the city below. "Skipper!" he cried out.

Wincing, Kim hit another button. "...my men were _ordered_ to surrender." _"War movie. So **not** in the mood tonight."_ _CLICK_

"...there is no spoon..." _CLICK_

"Keep watching the skies!" _CLICK_

"We'll be right back with 'More Stuff on Fire' after these..." _CLICK_

"...indecent exposure, lewd conduct, and suspicion of public intoxication." Kim flinched as she watched the late night talk show host's monologue, then winced as Ron's mug shot was unveiled on the national broadcast. _"I have to remember to take that picture down,"_ she promised herself. _"I'm his friend. It's okay for **me** to tease Ron about that, but not if... Well, at least they got his name wrong again."_ She didn't find the thought especially comforting.

Sighing, she turned off the TV, and leaned back in the seat. Closing her eyes, she resumed her struggle to relax.

A series of beeps emanating from inside her pants broke her attempt at concentrating on nothing. Kim drew the Kimmunicator from her pocket and activated the screen with her thumb. "Hi, Wade."

"Hi, Kim. I just got a call from GJ. Want me to put it through?"

Kim briefly considered refusing the call, but what Ron referred to as her innate Kim-ness prevented the idle thought from really taking root. "Go ahead," she smiled an apology for her foul mood.

Wade flashed a thumbs up as he vanished from the screen.

"Greetings, Kimberly Possible."

"Hi, Doctor Director. Where's the mission?" Kim asked.

Dr. Director smiled. "Nowhere, to the best of my knowledge. This is a social call. More or less."

Kim blinked, unsure how to handle that information. _"Does she ever **just** call?"_ "O...kay," she replied uncertainly.

"I wanted to extend my apologies for calling upon your services so soon after the recent," she paused delicately, "difficulties. But as you might expect, GJ's resources have been rather thoroughly tied up with WEE, and rather than jeopardize that operation, calling you in to handle the unrelated threat seemed to be the optimum solution. I appreciate your willingness to assist in this matter."

"It was no big," Kim shrugged off the praise.

Dr. Director's eye glinted as she asked, seemingly off- handedly, "And... Ronald?"

_"Of course,"_ Kim's lip quirked up in a half smile. _"She's checking up on Ron again. That explains everything."_ Oddly, with the ulterior motive revealed, Kim felt much more at ease with the call. "He did just fine. He kept Mrs. Luhrman busy by exchanging dessert recipes while I disabled Lucre's internet connection. Result? One evil plot foiled, and one low budget supervillain in custody. Ron smells like beef bouillon, but at least he didn't lose his pants. He's asleep back by the galley; I could wake him up if you wanted to talk to him?"

"No, let him sleep," Dr. Director smiled, and it appeared to be a much more natural and genuine expression than her previous attempt. "Just convey my appreciation of his efforts once he awakens."

Kim nodded, and after a moment's thought, she asked, "So how _is_ the crackdown on WEE going?"

"At this point... slowly," Dr. Director admitted. "We're running into some obstacles tracing the previous activity on the accounts we've frozen. I've been in negotiations for most of the day with a number of officials in regards to the unlocking of the banking records, but they've been dragging their feet - understandably, but regrettably.

"We do know Sheldon has to have at least one more account we haven't located since none of his activities in Bermuda have been drawn against the frozen accounts. Still, we're doing what we can with the information we have. Frankly, keeping Sheldon ignorant of our tightening dragnet as we dismantle his empire by leaving him alone and unobstructed is very much the lesser evil at this point."

Kim nodded her agreement. _"I hope Gemini returns from his vacation to find himself all alone and utterly bankrupt. He deserves far worse for what he did to Ron,"_ she thought, but limited her response to a simple, "Yeah."

"Well," Dr. Director continued when the silence had stretched uncomfortably, "As I said, this was largely a social call. I'll let you get some rest. Thank you again, Kim Possible." Her image vanished from the Kimmunicator's screen as it powered down, and Kim was left alone with her thoughts once more.

_"What a day... Ron gained a flock of female admirers for his selfless act, then promptly alienated them. We caught the bad guy, but Ron got squirted by a Smarty Mart reject. Seems like everything's pretty much back to normal,"_ Kim smiled to herself, comforted at the thought, then suddenly shuddered as a chill ran up her spine.

_"What on Earth was **that**?"_ she wondered with a shiver, still more than slightly freaked by the odd feeling that had utterly extinguished the brief moment of comfort she'd felt. _"It felt like someone just walked across my grave..."_

xxxXXXxxx

**To be continued...**


	12. Heaven help a Jupiter's Child

**Chapter 12: Heaven help a Jupiter's Child**

"... so Mr. Barkin was all like, 'You haven't even begun to redeem yourself for all your transgressions and violations of school and district policy,' and I was like, 'I know you like the book and all, but it's like Lo, the Plow Shall Till the Soil of Redemption all over again. I mean, The Infiltration and Deception Manual doesn't even talk about ventilation systems. How can I write a book report about a guide that's so lame it doesn't even talk about HVAC?' And he was..."

"Ron, shush and _focus_," Kim hissed over her shoulder. "Mr. Barkin can wait."

Ron coughed. "K.P.," he began carefully, his voice calm and composed, "we're crawling through a ventilation duct... and you're in front of me. If you want me to focus, I will, but I'll have to focus on the only thing I can see - which is your b..."

"Don't even _think_ about finishing that sentence," Kim ordered crossly, her muscles unconsciously tightening - shrinking certain unnamed portions of her anatomy as the musculature compressed.

"...boots," Ron grinned in the semidarkness as his eyes met Kim's through the arch formed by her kneeling body. Despite the dim illumination of the conduit and the shadows cast by her shoulders and limbs, he could see the disapproving scowl on her face, but was unphased by it.

He arched his own back while shifting his shoulders in an attempt to ease the tension that the effort of crawling through the close quarters of the conduits had generated. Doing so brought his face close to Kim's booted feet, and the organic tunnel her posture created. "'Made in Hollywood, USA,'" he read the small tag on the bottom of her left boot aloud, enunciating each word slowly and carefully - as though providing proof of his focus.

Kim snorted in a mix of amusement and irritation as Ron lifted his head away from her boot. "Never mind. Just..." she began, then fell silent as she abandoned the thought of reining him in as a lost cause. _"You can't leash the Mad Dog when he's in this kind of mood."_

She shifted her gaze away from him, back to the passage ahead, and resumed crawling forward. Despite (or because of) Ron's joking about her... boots, Kim unconsciously adjusted her posture to minimize her body's angle and lower her back - among other parts of her anatomy - and hide as much of herself as she could behind the shield of her boots.

"Fine. Do whatever you want," she commented over her shoulder as she crawled. "Keep talking. Let them know we're here. Just remind me to show you my boot _really_ closely after we get home." Kim loftily ignored Ron's quiet chuckle as they proceeded through the dusty vent, and Ron fell into a good-natured silence as he trailed after her.

The underground lair Team Possible was infiltrating was huge, and the ventilation system was of necessity just as complicated. "Complexity" unfortunately, was not necessarily a synonym of "interesting," and the long conduits, and the unchanging matte grey vistas they encountered as they proceeded, quickly palled. _"I shouldn't have told Ron to be quiet. This is **boring**."_

As she turned to crawl into the leftmost branch at a fork in the conduit, Kim finally succumbed to the monotony of their mode of travel and broke the silence. "So Mr. Barkin's still not letting you out of detention?" she asked, reiterating the pertinent information from Ron's earlier monologue. "Why not? It's already been what...? Three weeks now?"

"Nope, I'm still in detention, and it's been _four_ weeks," Ron confirmed, wisely not calling Kim on her change in position on the issue. "He has a stopwatch and he's logging every second I'm seated in detention - not just _in_ the room, but **seated**. 'It doesn't count otherwise,' he says. And he won't even tell me how long I have left to go before I'm free either."

"That doesn't seem fair," Kim coughed as her hands stirred up a cloud of dust from a drift that had accumulated on the lip of a structural support.

"Tell me about it," Ron waved one hand frantically in front of his face, sending the dust cloud Kim had raised swirling, but not appreciably clearing the air. "And any time I so much as breathe funny he tacks on more time - and writes it down in a notebook so he won't forget. If he has his way, I'll be spending a semester of summer school just serving detention at this rate." When he realized that Kim had hurried on, he quickly continued after her retreating figure, leaving the dust filled section behind.

They continued on until Kim paused as the floor of the conduit she was crawling atop suddenly flexed, caving in slightly with a dull crump as the metal gave beneath her weight. She quickly adjusted her position to accommodate the weakness, widening her stance to spread her weight over a greater area. "Watch it through here," she ordered. "Remember to keep your weight only on the joints, where the supports and braces are, and not the center part of the panels."

"Like I don't know how to do this?" Ron protested. "K.P., How many lairs have we been in? A lot, right? And in how many of those have we gone in through the vents?"

_"He does have a point,"_ Kim admitted to herself, but she reinforced her instructions nonetheless. "Fine, just **be careful**," she reiterated. "And keep your voice down. We should be getting close." Kim cautiously resumed her forward motion, and she could hear Ron following closely after.

The sudden thump as a conduit panel fell away from the duct work behind her was _almost_ completely unexpected. Kim covered her face with one gloved hand as she came to a stop. "Ron?" she asked, her eyes closed beneath the shield of her palm.

"Uh... Yes, K.P.?" he hesitantly answered.

"You did put your weight on the _joints_, didn't you?"

Ron chuckled nervously. "Um... I slipped?" he answered sheepishly.

In the ensuing silence, the clattering of the conduit panelling crashing against the stone floor far beneath the duct work reverberated loudly. Through the hole the fallen piece's absence created, a faint sound of distant voices could be heard - presumably guards being dispatched to investigate the racket.

"So much for sneaking in," Kim muttered under her breath. _"About four seconds to fall... 9.8 meters per second squared..."_ she swiftly calculated. _"Cake walk."_

"Sorry, K.P." Ron mumbled, feeling more disappointed in himself than Kim did.

Reaching into a side pocket, Kim pulled out a red mechanism that had once been a hair dryer. "No big - we'll deal, just like always. Now turn around," she ordered.

Ron edged backward, but the quarters were too tight for him to adjust his position enough to truly reverse course in the claustrophobic conduit. Experience told him what Kim intended, however, and so he tried to accommodate her needs despite the cramped quarters. "How's this?" he asked apologetically, holding himself spreadeagled above the rectangular hole in the conduit's floor, elbows and knees straight, pressing his back against the ceiling to maximize clearance.

"That'll do," Kim nodded to herself. She backed up to the lip of the gap, no more able to turn around than Ron had been, scraping her knees across the crimped seams in the duct, then cautiously edged further backwards until she was positioned in the narrow gap between Ron's body and the hole in the floor.

She aimed her grappling gun with one hand, while her free hand and her booted feet held her safely braced above the opening. Thumbing the release on the pistol grip, Kim shot the barbed hooks of the gun's grapnel through the thin metal of the conduit, making it bite into the volcanic rockface the ventilation system had been mounted to. She tugged briefly on the braided black line, testing the connection, and found it to be secure.

Kim clipped the grappling gun onto the parachute harness she wore over her usual mission clothes, a legacy of their HALO jump into the rainforest surrounding the extinct volcano, then adjusted the gun's settings so that it would function as both a descender and a belay device. _"Wade, you so rock."_

Using her teeth, Kim pulled her gloves move securely onto her hands - first one, then the other. She kept her weight distributed to at least three points at all times to minimize the possibility of another structural failure, and despite some creaking, the remainder of the ductwork remained stable.

A sudden droplet of moisture splashing onto the back of her neck caused Kim to look over her shoulder. Ron's face was tightened into a look of intense concentration, and sweat was beading on his brow as he held himself braced above both Kim and the yawning abyss beneath the hole in the ventilation system he'd accidentally made. "It's no big, Ron," Kim reassured him. "You've done this hundreds of times. Just relax, and hold on tight," she instructed, "and we'll be down before you know it."

"You got it, K.P." Ron agreed, his expression much less sanguine than his cavalier tone. Still, despite his visible nervousness, he obeyed her instructions, slowly shifting his grip and his weight until he was holding onto Kim for dear life, and she was supporting both their weight. "Ready," he finally whispered, interlocking his hands to strengthen his grip.

With a grin and a rush of adrenaline that she secretly felt was one of the best parts of going on a mission (_"Adrena Lynn, eat your heart out."_), Kim abruptly slipped her feet free of the bracing on the edge of the opening, letting the pair's combined weight swing the lower half of their bodies down into the gap in the conduit. Almost perfectly coincidental with the shift in their orientation, Kim drew her arms in close to her body, trapping and squeezing Ron's arms tightly against the sides of her torso. Freed of all support, they plunged feet first through the opening with a low whir from the cable spool in the grappling gun - and a short, sharp ripping sound.

"Oh, man," Ron's irritated whisper was loud in Kim's ear as his limbs tightened involuntarily.

Kim giggled as they dropped through the gloom, enjoying the breeze on her face, the warmth of friction as the swiftly extending line slid through her gloves, and the gentle burn of her muscles as she supported both herself and Ron as he clung to her while they descended. _"He's such a baby about freefall. How can anyone not love doing this?"_ "Lose your pants again?" she teased.

"Nah, it just feels like I tore the seat. Again." Ron mumbled his explanation into her hair, keeping his eyes squeezed tightly shut as he tried to ignore both the sensation of falling and the rush of air into the new opening in his clothing as his stomach roiled with unease.

The spool of wire inside the grappling gun whirred as it played out, and Team Possible fell in a barely controlled drop towards the cavern floor. Suddenly, and with a jolt that caused Ron's arms to tighten convulsively around Kim's chest, the whir of the mechanism deepened in tone and the rate of descent began to slow. With a faint whine, they alighted on the rough-hewn stone floor of the cavern beside the bent and battered section of fallen conduit panel.

Kim laughed quietly as she ejected the spent line from the grappling gun, and slotted in a replacement spool of cable before securing a new grapnel with a practiced twist. "Nailed the dismount," she gloated. "That _totally_ rocked."

"Yeah, fun," Ron muttered. Now that they were safely on the ground, his stomach was rapidly regaining its equilibrium, but he still felt a bit unsteady on his feet. He kept his eyes closed as he concentrated on evening his breathing.

After twirling the recharged grappling gun like a gunfighter, Kim casually restored it to its usual resting place in a side pocket of her cargo pants. "Ron?"

"Yeah, K.P.?"

"We're on the ground. You can let go now."

"I knew that," Ron sheepishly commented, releasing his death grip as he opened his eyes and glanced around, taking in the unadorned stone walls of the corridor. "I was just being... focused."

"Good boy," she jokingly praised. "Keep it up." Reaching over her shoulder, Kim pulled a lipstick from a side pocket of her backpack. After removing the cap and twisting the base, she aimed the ruby crystal that had sprouted from within the innocuous casing and squeezed once.

The flash of lambently coherent light was brilliant in the gloom. A streak of glowing crimson shot from the faux cosmetic dispenser towards the ceiling with a buzz of superheated air trailing in its wake. "You might want to step back," Kim noted, even as she followed her own recommendations.

Ron glanced up in confusion, then jumped back with a muffled yelp. From out of the darkness overhead, a severed loop of their discarded cable slapped against the rock floor, the trailing length lashing the air as it fell.

Covering his head protectively with his arms, Ron waited until the sizzling whisper of the falling line could no longer be heard, then cautiously peeked around his elbow. Across the puddled heap of severed cord, Kim was looking up into the shadowed expanse of the distant ceiling - and the ductwork the shadows concealed - with an expression of satisfaction.

"Got it on the first shot," she smiled proudly at Ron as she stowed the laser lipstick back in her pack. "And you can't see what's left because of the lighting in here. Hopefully the guards will think the conduit falling was accidental - it should buy us some time, anyway. Pick up the cable, and we'll get moving again."

At her gesture, Ron obediently picked up the cable, wincing as his injudicious fingers felt the lingering heat at the severed end - a legacy of the laser blast that had melted through the fibers. Ron rapidly coiled the cable around his arm, twining it through his hand and around his elbow to form rough loops. When the process was complete, he stowed the coil in Kim's backpack, tucking it behind her history homework as she impatiently waited for him to complete the task.

Kim glanced to the fallen piece of conduit, then looked up once more to double check the inconspicuousness of what remained of their cable. "Good enough. Now let's find Drakken... and we should hurry, before any guards get here."

Together the pair proceeded up the tunnel, deeper into the lair, leaving the camouflaged traces of their presence behind.

**xxXXxx**

Kim eased slowly down the corridor, her back pressed against the rough textured wall. _"Lava tunnel I guess... feels like he hasn't fixed it up much either. Which means either Drakken's not planning to stay here long, or he's just moved in and hasn't gotten around to polishing off the rough edges."_

She paused, flattening herself as best she could, as she neared an archway built from a trio of curved steel I-beams. Tilting her head forward, she peered around the entryway's frame as Ron sidled cautiously up behind her.

_"Bingo,"_ Kim grinned to herself, as she spied the heart of the lair inside the cyclopean chamber. The massive cavern beyond the archway - what had once been the caldera of the defunct volcano before being enclosed - was clearly the home of Drakken's latest scheme.

Although the complex only occupied a third of the colossal cavern, steel constructs - catwalks, platforms, gantries, banks of lights, serviceways and ramps - had been installed to subdivide the vast expanse of the cavern into more usable, functional space. The catwalks formed a web interconnecting the components of the multi-tiered complex, as well as providing access to the tunnel openings that gaped from various locations and heights along the cavern wall. At the center of the massive steel web, ominously crouched like a spider as it squatted atop an elevated platform, lurked a massive energy cannon, the barrel of the weapon aimed vertically, towards the shadowed and distant roof of the chamber.

"Death ray," Kim whispered to Ron, nudging him with an elbow to get his attention. She pointed to the weapon as he crouched beside her. At his nod, she shifted her finger's aim, pointing across the cavern to a prefabricated steel platform that had been bolted to the wall. A pair of red-clad henchmen lounged in front of a set of flatscreen monitors, one displaying a diagram of the cannon, while the other appeared to show a mix of text and multicolored geometric shapes. "And the control room."

"Shego!" Ron whispered intently back, pointing towards the cannon.

Kim's brow furrowed as she sighted along Ron's finger. _"Where is she?"_ "Gotcha," she finally whispered back. The villainess had been almost invisible as she leaned against the cannon's undercarriage filing her gloves' claws, thanks to her similarly colored and patterned jumpsuit.

Piqued by missing Shego - camouflaged or not - Kim quickly scanned the rest of the chamber, searching for any other surprises as she counted henchmen. "I see twelve plus Shego," she whispered.

"Usual plan? Distraction time?" Ron whispered back.

"Not yet," Kim answered. "I don't see Drakken."

Ron nodded and moved back, further from the entryway. "You know, you've got to give props to Drakken," Ron quietly said. "No matter how many times you beat him, he never gives up."

"That's not something we want to encourage, Ron," Kim pointed out as her eyes continued to rove over the cavern, mapping the catwalks and identifying the locations of all possible entrances, exits, elevators, henchmen, and access routes in preparation for making her move. "We want him to stop the whole 'take over the world' thing. Remember?"

"True, but hey, credit where credit's due." Ron slipped to the opposite side of the connecting tunnel and pressed his back to the wall, hiding behind the steel archway. Flanking the tunnel, they watched the villainous gathering and waited for just the right moment to intervene.

**xxXXxx**

With a low rumble, the elevated platform housing the cannon began to sink. Shego slipped her file into a pocket in her jumpsuit and walked to the edge of the platform, her expression twisting into an interesting cross between bored and exasperated.

"I see it," Ron commented quietly, before Kim could say anything.

"Not just that; Drakken must be coming. Look at Shego," Kim instructed.

Ron smiled at the look of insolent insouciance on the green woman's face. "Mr. Barkin would throw me in detention for a _year_ if I looked at him like that," he said admiringly.

Kim's expression didn't change, but Ron sensed her amusement at his observation. They continued to watch, content to wait for just the right moment.

**xxXXxx**

From a tunnel mouth at ground level, a blue-skinned man stalked into the chamber. A gloating grin glowed on his scarred face, and in his hands he lovingly cradled a cylindrical object.

"They didn't steal the Pan Dimensional Vortex Inducer again did they?" Kim gasped in disbelief.

"What took you so long?" Shego called over to Drakken, the acoustics in the chamber bringing her words clearly to the heroes' ears.

"I was called away," Drakken answered her as he neared the platform, mumbling irritably to himself. "Remind me to complain to the contractor about the vents. I know it was a rush job, but that's no excuse for shoddy craftsmanship."

"You get what you pay for," Shego retorted, clearly bored with the conversation.

Drakken stepped onto the central platform, and as he opened an access panel on the side of the evil device, the angle of the weapon's barrel began to sink as the platform began to rise. Soon, the platform had returned to its former position, and the cylinder the mad scientist was carrying was revealed.

"Ok, so it's not the Inducer," Kim breathed a little easier as she realized the cylinder was decorated - unlike the plain casing of the Pan Dimensional Vortex Inducer. _"Unless they've redecorated it since the last time it was stolen,"_ she worried. _"Not that they did after any of the other times, but maybe..."_

Kim's eyes widened as Drakken slowly turned the cylinder, screwing it into a socket in the base of the weapon. As it rotated, the markings were revealed: first a radiation warning sigil... then a biohazard symbol... and finally a picture of Drakken's scowling face above block, capital letters warning : "MINE". _"That can't be good."_

**xxXXxx**

Doctor Drakken looked up at the gleaming shape of his latest diabolical creation and bit back the urge to laugh maniacally as he closed the access panel, hiding the deadly cylinder he'd added to the weapon behind the innocuous protective shielding. "Now that the evil majesty of my molecular discombobulator has been infused with the primal force of annihilation that is my atomic projector, the world will have no other choice than to bow down before me!" he proclaimed, shaking one fist in the air in triumph.

xxXXxx

Kim couldn't have asked for a better moment to announce her presence. _"Took him long enough. He's usually quicker at feeding me a straight line."_ "**I don't think so**," she called out.

The blue-skinned mad scientist spun about, searching for the lackey who had dared to contradict him while he was gloating, interrupting his moment of glory. "Who said that? Shego!" he barked.

"Wasn't me, boss," the green-skinned woman denied. "Based on past experience, I'd have to say it was most likely..."

"Kim Possible!" Dr. Drakken shouted, pointing towards his teen-aged nemesis as she suddenly appeared, standing on a gantry far overhead. "Impossible! How could she have found us?"

"That's what happens when you steal stuff," Kim informed him, her smile plain even atop her distant perch. "People track you down. Haven't you learned that by now?"

"Told you we shouldn't have stolen that crystal thingy," Shego muttered out of the side of her mouth, igniting her hands into glowing life. "You should have just built one of your own."

"Oh, please. Like it's that easy. I'd like to see _you_ try to build a focusing crystal capable of withstanding the raw, primal power of my atomic projector. Annealing the mounting brackets alone would take..."

"Complain later," Shego barked as she jumped to the top of the cannon, her boots flexing as she landed atop the curved barrel. "It's time to take out the trash."

"Careful, Shego! Aligning the radiant fins is a delicate process!" Drakken protested, waving his arms wildly in emphasis. He winced as her feet trod carelessly on the carefully positioned mechanisms.

Ignoring her employer (as she so often did), Shego leaped from her new vantage to a catwalk along the edge of the cavern. She paused as she regained her balance after the jump, then ran up the sloping path, heading for the smirking cheerleader, leaving twin contrails of glowing plasma in her wake as flickering energy dripped from her clawed gloves.

"She never listens," Drakken muttered under his breath. Leaning over a railing he yelled at the minions clustered below - uniformly goggling at the two females as they charged towards their latest confrontation. "Don't just stand there! What do I pay you for, anyway? Get her!"

Chastised, the henchmen scrambled to obey. With a swirl of activity, the red clad lackeys rushed about, seeking a way to reach the fight - or at least to appear that they were doing so - but mostly not accomplishing much.

**xxXXxx**

With the villains either locked in combat with Kim (specifically Shego) or standing around watching the fight (everyone else), Ron made his move. He tiptoed around the perimeter of the chamber, the catwalk creaking beneath his boots, until he reached the ramp leading up to the control room Kim had pointed out to him earlier.

Even though the villains were distracted by Kim's fight, Ron was frankly amazed that he made it to his target undetected. _"Yamanouchi 1, Bad guys, 0."_ As Kim cartwheeled away from a flurry of plasma-enhanced punches, Ron tiptoed up the ramp to the control room, and found the henchmen had deserted it to join their fellows in watching the fight. _"Time to do what I do best."_

Ron reached into a pocket and pulled out his faithful companion. "Up and at 'em, Rufus," he whispered, waking the naked mole rat from one of his frequent daily naps. "We've got a job to do."

The naked mole rat stretched, yawning hugely. After scratching his belly with one claw, he flashed a quick thumbs up at Ron, showing his readiness.

"Here's the situation," Ron instructed quietly. "We've got one laser cannon with two control panels, both with lots of blinking lights, levers and buttons - precision engineering at its finest. Lets break 'em both," he grinned in anticipation.

Rufus chittered his agreement with the plan, and climbed into the bowels of one of the consoles. From the depths of the machine, intermittent chomping sounds, fizzles of electrical discharges, and the squeal of metal grinding against metal quickly emerged.

Ron turned to the other console and began to randomly press buttons, throw levers, and turn dials. He read a handwritten warning label mounted below one knob: "Caution: Do not turn past 4." He immediately turned it to 11.

High overhead, Shego leaped from a derrick, then leapfrogged over a sconce. She slid beneath a flying kick, then vaulted to a catwalk at a lower level before returning to the fray. Despite himself, Ron found himself joining Drakken's henchmen in watching the fight; the sheer athleticism of the conflict as Kim fought Shego - displayed by both combatants - was enthralling.

With a sharp pop and a smell of ozone, the blinking lights on Rufus' console abruptly went out. From a small gap in the casing, the pink animal staggered out of the sabotaged machine, covered in ash, and with the tips of his whiskers smoking.

"Way to go, Rufus!" Ron praised. His cheer turned into a pained grunt as he suddenly crashed to the diamond-plate floor of the control room, a heavy weight pressed atop him.

Ron blinked, finding himself nose to nose with Shego, her body pressing down on his. He licked his lips nervously as he stared at her perfectly symmetrical face, her flawless, creamy green complexion, the smooth arch of her cheekbones, the bold slant of her brows... the cold emerald of her eyes.

_"She's awake!"_ The realization brought Ron's silent observations to a screeching halt.

"You know," he told her seriously, as she straightened, pressing down on his sternum for leverage with one hand as she rose. As she knelt above him, straddling his stomach, he added, "I love your skin. I don't know what it is, but there's just something about..."

Ron yelped and scrambled backward, sliding out from underneath the villainess as her right hand began to glow with plasma flame. The hand that had been on his chest curled as it slid down his body, bringing glittering highlights to the razor edges of her claws, but thankfully, that hand didn't ignite, nor did she dig in with the talons.

"Say one word about me being 'hot,'" Shego snorted derisively at the flinching sidekick, waving her flaming hand, "and I swear I'll geld you."

Ron continued to crab-walk backwards until his back was pressed against a support pylon - as far from her as he could go in the small room. "Not a word," he promised, his eyes wide as he stared up the length of Shego's body into her eyes. _"I'll still think it though."_

Shego rose to her feet, and dismissively turned her back on the buffoon. She ignited her other hand, surrounding it with a matching aura of green plasma, then jumped out of the control room. Pushing off with one leg from atop the smoking console Rufus had sabotaged, she leaped back to the top of Drakken's death ray in the center of the cavern.

"Hey, Kimmie," she called out, "your boytoy just tried to hit on me," Shego smirked as she watched Kim's face, trying to gauge her reaction to the taunt.

"He's not my boyfriend," Kim retorted.

Shego was disappointed that Kim didn't show more of a reaction to the dig. "Sure you're not just a _little_ jealous?" Shego's smirk grew wider, and a hum of amused speculation began to rise from the loitering henchmen below.

"So not; we're just friends," Kim shot back. "Besides, even if we were, I have no reason to be jealous. I know what his 'dream girl' looks like - and she's a lot more like me than you," Kim returned Shego's smirk with interest as she posed on the edge of a catwalk. "His 'dream girl' looks like **me** - even if she _does_ have your build and coloration. But then, there's no accounting for taste."

Shego blinked, and the plasma sheathing her hands winked out, so great was her surprise. "He actually _told_ you something like that?" Shaking her head, she mumbled under her breath, "Kids today... no sense of propriety..." before adding "You talk about stuff like that, and you still say he's not your boyfriend...?" she demanded in a louder voice.

Kim snorted at the expression on Shego's face. She crouched, her unconsciously graceful pose leonine - or leopardine - as she jumped to the pulley assembly at the end of a crane mounted above the death ray. "It wasn't like I asked him," she explained. "He was sort of talking in his sleep. I guess it's kind of flattering if you think about it - in a sick, twisted sort of way. But then, Ron _is_ a guy - he can't really help it."

Shego snorted, but didn't dispute the characterization. "Pervert," she mumbled, scowling at Ron where he peeked around a stanchion.

Glancing over the edge of the platform to the watching minions below, Shego couldn't tell whether the henchmen had overheard the tail end of the conversation or not. Not that it mattered; they weren't doing anything constructive. They were simply standing around watching her fight with Kim - and from the expressions on their faces, they were enjoying the fight just a little _too_ much. Shaking her head in disgust, Shego growled, "Idiots," and flung a blast of green plasma into the thickest concentration of them, scattering them like a flushed covey of quail. "I'm surrounded by idiots and perverts," she snarled.

Kim chuckled. "Aren't they on your side?"

"They're supposed to be," Shego growled, her attention split between her opponent and the henchmen. "Why aren't you doing something?" she barked, sending them scrambling once more.

Kim grinned as Shego's expression darkened as the henchmen fell all over themselves trying to escape from Shego's wrath, rather than helping her with the intruder. Kim rose to her feet as Shego snarled and leaped to the attack once more.

Ron peered around the edge of the support, watching Shego and Kim as they leaped nimbly around the cavern, using catwalks, cranes, gantries and Drakken's new weapon as jumping off points as they fought for position and advantage. "You can do it, Kim!" he called out encouragingly.

A sizzling bolt of green plasma abruptly smacked into the support Ron was hiding behind. "Gah!" Ron leaped away from the smoking crater and scuttled back across the control room.

Ron's blind scramble brought him to the edge of the platform near the ramp - where there was no safety fence - and before he could realize the danger, he overbalanced and slipped over the edge. Crying, "Kim!" he fell to the cavern floor, landing in an awkward parachutist's tumble that saved his legs from fracturing, but left him sprawled indelicately on the stone floor.

Unnoticed, Rufus ran down the ramp leading from the control room. He wended his way invisibly along the catwalks, seeking a way down to Ron.

**xxXXxx**

Shego paused atop the cannon, catching her breath as Kim knelt on a catwalk, peering down at her fallen friend. "Ron, you ok?" Kim called.

"He's better than you're about to be," Dr. Drakken's sneering voice caught both Kim and Shego by surprise. In the heat of the fight, they'd almost forgotten he was there.

As they turned, the mad scientist fiddled with a pair of joysticks mounted to the back of the cannon, aiming the barrel directly at his nemesis. Shego pinwheeled her arms, sliding down the barrel of the weapon as it moved beneath her. "Watch it!" she yelled, coming to a stop near the breech.

Kim crouched, readying herself to dodge. "Ron?" she called again, not daring to turn her eyes from the muzzle of the massive weapon, watching for any indication it was about to fire.

"I'm okay," he coughed. "Kind of," Ron amended, as he climbed to his feet, only to find himself surrounded by grinning red- suited henchmen. The smiles grew broader as they drew shock sticks from their belts.

Drakken laughed and pulled a lever. "You won't be for long..." he chortled. "Prepare to be discombobulated!"

As the lever sank into firing position, a harsh burst of crimson light erupted from a monitor in the control room Ron had abandoned. The words "Overload Warning!" flashed on the screen, bathing part of the cavern in a ruddy light as a klaxon began to echo through the chamber.

"Wha...?" Drakken began, glancing around as his hands fell away from the controls.

With a grinding of gears and the slow whimper of a flywheel coming to a halt, the cavern was abruptly enveloped in total darkness. In the chthonic night, Drakken's growl of maddened frustration echoed magnificently. "Stop! Nobody move!" he commanded. "The power's out."

"You think so? What was your first clue?" a male voice echoed in the cavern.

Kim chuckled. _"That was one of Drakken's henchmen."_

"I heard that!" Drakken snarled. "And I'm docking your pay! I don't take lip from my lackeys. Shego! Get the emergency power."

"On it, boss," she acknowledged.

In the total darkness under the earth beneath the hollow core of the dead volcano, a flare of green came to life as Shego raised a hand...

And Ron began to scream.

**xxXXxx**

Shego glanced down from her perch, but the light from her hand was insufficient to pierce the depth of the darkness. "Stoppable?" she called curiously as the screams continued.

"Ron!" Kim called from somewhere above Shego.

Neither call had any effect on the panicked cries and screams. "Eyes in the dark! Eyes in the dark! Eyes in the dark!" rang out, the panicked tones filled with a primordial terror.

In the pool of darkness below her, tiny pinpricks of blue light appeared as the frightened henchmen activated their shock sticks. But as quickly as they appeared, they began to wink out. The flickering movements of the puny lights were hypnotic as they danced in the darkness like fireflies - and were as ephemeral. One by one, they winked out - as quickly as they had appeared they were quenched.

The sound of thumps, groans, and crashes began to filter out of the darkness in a savage accompaniment to the unending screams that dopplered around the cavern. "Boss?" Shego called, seeking direction.

"Forget them! Just get the lights!" Drakken's frightened bellow was nearly drowned out by a swiftly muffled cry of pain and a horrid, wet splintering noise.

"Right," Shego ignited her other hand, and bathed in the green glow of her innate plasma, jumped up to a catwalk. She hurried to an inconspicuous metal panel inset into the cavern wall, and tore the door from it's hinges with a squeal of tortured metal.

A booming crash erupted from the darkness, swiftly followed by another. "Hurry, Shego!" Drakken ordered, more than a hint of panic in his voice.

Shego doused one hand, then reached into the panel's heart to throw the old-fashioned toggle it concealed. With a whine as the backup generator rumbled into life, light slowly returned to the underground chamber.

Another round of booming crashes erupted, undeterred by the illumination. Ron's screaming stopped as the light returned, and in the silence of his cries' aftermath, the strange booms echoed even louder.

Hurrying back to the edge of the catwalk, Shego looked down. "What the...?" she began in astonishment, her eyes widening in shock.

Scattered across the cavern floor lay the bent and broken bodies of Drakken's henchmen. Their shock sticks lay beside them, abandoned where they'd fallen - having proved worthless as protection against whatever had taken them out.

Shego jumped down two levels to the central elevated platform, landing in a crouch beside the frightened form of her boss. "What happened?" she demanded, her eyes wide as she turned from the grim spectacle to face her employer.

"Ron!" Kim's cry echoed through the cavern as she jumped down. She landed beside Shego, then jumped down to the floor after a barely perceptible pause to regain her balance.

Shego moved to follow the teen, but Drakken's hand on her shoulder stopped her in her tracks. She snarled as she turned on him, one clawed hand rising menacingly, but the expression on his face brought her up short again.

Drakken pointed, his finger shaking uncontrollably, and Shego ducked her head to follow the indicated line of sight. The colossal main entrance to the cavern - a door 12 feet high and nearly 20 feet wide - was bowed out at the center. A massive concavity had been formed, the indentation such that it appeared a titan's fist had punched the metal.

Her eyebrows rising, Shego whistled soundlessly. "What did _that_?" she demanded.

"Ron!" Kim called again.

There was a flicker of movement, and another boom echoed through the cavern. Shego squinted, and realized that a slight figure stood by the door, and was the source of the sounds... and the indentation. "_Stoppable?_" she breathed in disbelief.

xxxXXXxxx

Kim jumped over the prone bodies, largely ignoring them once she realized they were merely unconscious rather than dead. After seeing the awkward positioning of some of the limbs - some were bent at unnatural angles, indicating broken bones or dislocated joints - she had briefly feared the worst.

"Ron?" she breathed as she neared the damaged door, and the figure crouched before it. "Are you okay?"

The figure glanced over his shoulder, and Kim blanched. Ron's eyes were wide, his pupils blown, and he was shaking - either with fear or rage, it was impossible to tell. He was mumbling to himself, but too quietly to be understood. _"I haven't seen him like this since Florida..."_

Ron lifted his arms, revealing the twisted, mutilated remains of the shock sticks he carried - obviously commandeered from the henchmen, and much the worse for wear. He paused with the sticks raised, then with an animalistic grunt of effort, swung them against the door. A booming crash erupted from the tortured metal, and the indentation developed a lopsided bulge as a new mark melded with the old.

He paused, then looked down at the rough edged stumps of the weapons in his hands. The sticks he wielded had snapped at the force of the final blow, sending the sizzling and malfunctioning heads flying randomly across the cavern. He gazed uncomprehendingly at the remnants of his weapons, his pupils pulsing as he gazed without seeing.

Kim edged closer as Ron dropped the broken sticks, and realized he hadn't fallen silent - he was still repeating what he'd been screaming earlier, mumbling "Eyes in the dark," over and over again. _"What does that mean?"_ she wondered.

"Ron?" she asked cautiously, reaching out to him. As her hand touched his shoulder, he spun, and his fist crashed against her cheek, knocking her violently to the floor.

**xxXXxx**

"Incredible!" Drakken breathed, staring as Ron's punch knocked Kim back. "I wouldn't have believed it was possible, but the sidekick actually took down Kim Possible..." A look of rapture grew on his face as he thought aloud, "If I can get a sample of the buffoon's DNA, I can..."

"**NO!**" Shego barked, the finality of the command undeniable. "No cloning. Not ever," she ordered. "Not me, not you, not Kimmie, and not the sidekick."

Drakken scowled, but reluctantly nodded. "Very well," he agreed. "I suppose if he's willing to turn on his best friend, his clones wouldn't make a very dutiful army, anyway," he groused.

"Do you think the rumor's true?" Shego asked after a pause as she watched Ron sink to his knees beside Kim's prone form.

"What rumor?" Drakken asked distractedly. He was too caught up in watching Kim as she sat up and hesitantly reached for her slumping sidekick again - more cautiously this time - to really focus on Shego's words.

"The one about Stoppable and WEE. I wouldn't have thought even Gemini would have the nerve to try something that twisted, but..." she trailed off, and gestured silently to the two teens.

"Hmm," Drakken scowled. "Perhaps so. Global Justice _has_ been unusually... dedicated in their pursuit of WEE lately, and..." he too gestured silently toward the two teens, as though Kim's fallen position were evidence enough. "Definitely poor supervillain form if it is true."

Shego snorted. "Says the man who wanted a clone army."

"I'm a mad scientist. It's what I do," Drakken calmly pointed out, unphased by her mild sarcasm - he was used to far worse from her.

"So what do we do now?" Shego asked, glancing away from the duo. "The lackeys are down - not that they were good for much anyway - and Kimmie and the sidekick will eventually remember we're still here."

"I had hoped Global Justice would be so distracted by WEE, they'd ignore my efforts entirely," Drakken admitted. "But perhaps I miscalculated."

"You didn't; they were. But you forgot they've still got Kimmie to do their dirty work for them."

Drakken growled at the evident truth of that. "No matter." He turned and opened the rear access panel on his weapon. He unscrewed the cylindrical shape of his atomic projector from its socket, and handed it to his sidekick to carry. "Come, Shego. This plan is foiled. But my next one will be far superior, and we _will_ succeed - my global conquest is inevitable."

Drakken smirked as he hopped from the platform, crossing a small gap and landing on a catwalk. "In the mean time," he called over his shoulder, "you can help me think of a suitable 'thank you' present to send to Gemini. After all, we really must express our appreciation for his transformation of the buffoonish sidekick into an unstoppable killing machine."

Shego grinned; the idea sounded _very_ appealing - and entertaining. "You got it boss. Maybe something to match his _explosive_ personality? Or possibly something that would provide a _pointed_ lesson? Or so _shocking_ it'll make him _lose his head_?" she chuckled. "I can't wait to see what you come up with."

She followed him up a ramp and into the tunnel leading to his flying saucer's hanger, abandoning the fallen henchmen to their fate, but carrying the seed of their next scheme along with her.

**xxXXxx**

Ron's eyes widened in horror as the sound of his hand striking his friend reverberated in his ears. The shock of the blow - the emotional shock more than the physical - snapping him back to himself more profoundly than anything else possibly could have.

"K.P.?" he whispered. But Kim remained silent, her body lying prone and still on the stony floor beside the broken fragments of the henchmen's shock sticks.

As Ron's eyes dropped away from her prone form, his vision blurred as tears arose. As he lifted a hand to wipe the salt droplets away, his gaze alighted on a smear of crimson across the side of his fist.

"no..." Ron breathed, the color draining from his face as he stared at his friend's blood on his hands. He lifted his quavering hands, staring at the stain that trumpeted his betrayal as thoroughly as the mark of Cain.

His lungs heaving, Ron sank to his knees before Kim's body. He stared at the blood on his hands, his heart racing faster and faster.

"I killed her," he whispered. Ron's face fell as he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to shut out the horror of what he had done. The attempt was futile; visions of Kim's bloodstained body flickered before his mind's eye.

Her desecrated corpse smiled up at him, her grin a morbid rictus as she leered from her splayed position. "No," he whispered, shaking his head.

"Ron," Kim gurgled, the name bubbling ghoulishly as it leaked from a wound in her throat. As she sat up, she pulled a knife out of her heart, her skin licking across the golden blade with an eerie slurp, reluctant to release its grip on the weapon that had been embedded in her flesh, as she drew it inch by inch from her body.

"No..." Ron panted desperately, unable to force his body to move. Despite his wild desire to flee, and the surging adrenaline pumping through his veins, he could only stare at Kim's visibly decaying corpse as it reached out with cold, claw- like fingers.

**"RON!"**

xxxXXXxxx

"Ow," Kim winced as she sat up, lifting herself from the stony floor. She rubbed her aching cheekbone with one hand, then scowled as a burning from the corner of her mouth made itself known. She wasn't really surprised to find a streak of blood on the back of her hand as she lowered it. _"Split my lip."_

Kim stuck her tongue from the side of her mouth, feeling at the cut with the tip. _"No big,"_ she realized, even though it stung. Shaking her head, Kim shifted her attention away from her injuries, and towards the source of them.

"Ron?" she asked cautiously. Ron knelt nearby, his hands cupping the air, fingers pointing upwards toward his lowered face. Kim blinked as Ron didn't move, making no sign that he had heard her.

She tentatively reached out, but not even her touch to his shoulder brought him out of his daze. "Ron?" she asked again, louder this time.

"I'm so sorry, K.P." Ron breathed inaudibly, not looking up from his stained hands. "I didn't mean... I killed you," he concluded hopelessly.

Kim cupped his cheeks and lifted Ron's face, physically turning his gaze to meet hers. Ron's eyes were closed, his brow furrowed, and his skin was pale and bloodless, blanched by self- loathing to the point of translucence.

"Ron!" Kim barked, but without response or reaction from him. **"RON!"**

xxxXXXxxx

Peering over the edge of what looked to be the edge of an enormous cliff from his diminutive perspective, Rufus watched Ron fearfully. Despite everything Kim was doing, Ron remained unresponsive.

The maze of catwalks he'd attempted to navigate had proven confusing and ill-suited for a naked mole rat. With Ron incapacitated, Rufus abandoned the attempt to follow the conventional path, in favor of a more direct - if unconventional - route.

Rufus edged determinedly over the side of a catwalk, dangling over a fall many times his own length, and began to rock himself back and forth, his tail whipping as he slowly built up speed. When he had sufficient momentum, he flipped acrobatically through the air, rotating whiskers over tail in three perfect 360 degree rotations before catching himself on a power cable leading up to one of the lights mounted high above the cavern floor.

Sliding down the cable, Rufus let go just before the cable looped and sank into the wall, taking to the air once more. The leap was smaller, but brought him to a hydraulic line leading to the central elevated platform and the cannon it supported.

After spinning around the line with one clawed hand, Rufus let his weight draw him down. Using his tail as an improvised brake, he controlled his rapid plunge, then leaped once more to a support stanchion. Disdaining another jump, Rufus wrapped himself around the strut and slid the final few feet to the cavern floor.

Ordinarily Rufus would have celebrated his acrobatic success - he was much like his "father" Ron in that respect - as he landed on the back of an unconscious henchman with bows, waves, and considering the complexity, probably a loud "ta-da!" to boot. Given Ron's fugue and the lack of appreciative witnesses, however, he reluctantly forwent the opportunity.

Scampering across the unconscious bodies of Drakken's lackeys, Rufus finally reached Kim and Ron. "Wha-oh," he uttered, looking up into Ron's face.

xxxXXXxxx

"Wake up Ron," Kim pleaded, cradling Ron's bloodless cheeks between her hands. "Please..."

Kim glanced to the side as she felt a faint touch on her shoulder but when she turned to look, there was nothing there. She turned back to Ron and blinked at the sight of Rufus perched on Ron's shoulder.

Rufus was chittering wildly, a constant stream of naked mole rat that Kim found incomprehensible. _"And here I bragged that I understand him so well..."_ she thought distantly.

Rufus ducked under Kim's hands and wrapped himself around Ron's neck, still unleashing a stream of dialogue that she couldn't begin to understand. To her surprise, Ron showed a reaction to it - after he'd proven unresponsive to anything she had said or done.

"Rufus?" Ron breathed.

"Ron!" Kim and Rufus joyfully responded.

"I killed her," Ron whispered.

"No!" Kim insisted. "I'm right here, remember? It was just a dream!"

Ron blinked, and for the first time, seemed to acknowledge her presence. "K.P.?"

"Yes," Kim breathed. "Are you okay?"

"I thought I killed you..."

"No, Ron. Think... remember... Look at me; I'm here, and okay," Kim ordered.

Rufus chimed in with his agreement, "Uh huh, uh huh."

Ron abruptly moved, and before Kim realized his intent, he had entwined himself around her, embracing her and hugging her as thoroughly as Rufus had done to Ron's neck. "K.P. ... You're alive..." he whispered in her ear. "You're _warm_," he breathed reverently, as though that were the most amazing thing.

Kim squirmed her shoulders, awkwardly disentangling her arms. Once they were free, she patted Ron on the back. "It's okay, Ron." _"I guess it's his turn to do the 'touchy' thing for a while,"_ she grinned in amusement.

She rose to her feet, and Ron reluctantly did the same, but kept himself wrapped around her. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, and showed no signs of releasing her.

Drawing out her Kimmunicator, Kim pressed the red button to page Wade. She rolled her shoulders, freeing one arm from the knot Ron had made of their limbs, and held the machine at arm's length as she waited for the boy to reply.

"Hey Kim, how'd..." Wade trailed off as he received an eyeful of their embrace - Rufus on Ron, and Ron on Kim in turn. "Anything I should know?" he asked, his voice torn between teasing and weirded out by what he could see.

"Flashback," Kim answered succinctly.

"Oh," Wade replied, his expression and voice evening out. "Everything... okay?"

"It is now," Kim sighed.

Wade nodded slowly, unsure whether the response had been truthful, or merely hopeful. "So... how'd the mission go?"

"Mission successful," Kim noted, turning the Kimmunicator so that Wade could see the death ray - with the stolen focusing crystal still in place - and the fallen minions, who remained unconscious. _"It seems like it's been hours since the lights went out, but in reality it's just been minutes."_ "But it looks like Drakken and Shego got away." Kim was distantly grateful they had fled instead of attacking while Ron was so out of it.

"Now, we need a ride," Kim added, "then a pickup by GJ for the henchmen. Some need medical attention, but none of the injuries I've seen are life threatening."

A steady tapping of keys came from the Kimmunicator's speakers as Wade's fingers began to type on one of his keyboards. "There's not that many favors due in the region," Wade noted. "Can you catch a ride from GJ when they come to collect?"

Kim frowned, before slowly, cautiously, replying, "No... I think we should get back to school ASAP." Hurriedly she elaborated, "Ron needs to get back. Mr. Barkin's been coming down on him pretty thoroughly." _"We don't need to trouble GJ with Ron again - and vice versa."_ she thought, but didn't speak her reservations aloud.

Wade slowly nodded, and Kim wondered how much of her unspoken thoughts he had picked up on. If he had any doubts, he didn't speak of them; instead he simply acknowledged her decision, "Gotcha."

"And now... might not be the best time for a parachute jump," Kim awkwardly explained, gesturing with her chin towards the blonde lump attached to her.

Rufus chittered his agreement from Ron's neck, peering around Ron's ear to see the Kimmunicator.

"Definitely." Wade paused to type on his keyboard, then said, "I'll have a ride for you by the south face of the volcano in less than 30."

"Thanks Wade," Kim smiled sadly.

"No big, Kim," Wade flashed a thumbs up, then terminated the connection.

"Let's go, Ron," Kim ordered as she stowed the Kimmunicator. Ron was reluctant to release her, but she eventually disengaged his grasp, save for her left hand, which he held tightly with his right.

Kim led the silent and pale Ron carefully out of the lair, her efforts cheered on by Rufus.

XxxXXXxxX

In any school other than Middleton High, the landing of an Apache attack helicopter (AH-64D) in the faculty parking lot would have inspired a rush of interest and a variety of gawkers, no matter the hour. At Middleton, a school long since grown inured to advanced technology, unusual modes of transport, and general weirdness, it barely inspired a ripple of interest even among those still in attendance after school was technically over for the day.

"Thanks for the ride!" Kim called over her shoulder as she drew Ron along after her. They paused near the cafeteria entrance as the rotors on the helicopter returned to speed. As it took once more to the air, they entered the school, Kim still pulling Ron along by the hand.

"Greetings, knave, sprite-kin," a female voice called out as they entered.

Kim paused, and smiled at Zita. Her smile widened as Ron smiled as well - virtually the first reaction he'd voluntarily shown since he'd come out of his fugue state. "Hi, Zita," she answered, over Ron's quiet, "Hola."

Zita paused, taking in their postures and Ron's odd expression. "You guys okay? Ron looks paler than Malcolm after a weekend in an immersion cap."

"Weird mission. We're good, though," Kim explained. She smiled a bit as Ron nodded, the motion accompanied by a tighter squeeze to her hand.

Zita glanced back and forth between the two. "So what's up with the hand holding? You two finally hook up?"

"So not," Kim shot back, but didn't release her grip on his hand. "Ron's just..."

"I thought she was dead," Ron answered quietly - which was both true, and utterly misleading. _"I thought I killed her, and her corpse was going to kill me as revenge."_ He gripped tighter, feeling the softness of living, undecayed tissue under his fingertips, and the warmth of life she exuded. "It... helps."

"Ouch," Ron's ex winced, and her expression grew sympathetic. "Makes me glad Malcolm's hobbies are a little less dangerous these days."

"Keeping him on the straight and narrow?" Kim asked.

Zita's smirk was almost menacing. "You know it."

"Uh, K.P. ... Mr. B... Stopwatch?" Ron hesitantly interrupted.

"I know," Kim answered. "Sorry, Zita... We have to go. Mr. Barkin has Ron on almost as short a leash as yours is on Malcolm."

"Better run along then," she smirked. "I'm not letting him slip his leash again, and I bet Mr. Barkin feels the same way with Ron." She waved goodbye as she headed out the door.

_"That is one **weird** mental picture - and one I could have done without."_ Kim's tension eased as Ron released his grip on her hand as the door closed behind Zita. As it clicked shut, he began to move ahead, hurrying towards detention. "Um, Ron?" she called after him. "You do remember that you tore your pants?"

Ron simply shrugged. "So? I'd rather not waste time changing them. Every tick on Mr. B's stopwatch counts."

As Ron hurried into room 12 and slid into his seat, Kim was startled to see Mr. Barkin clicking a button on a hand held stopwatch. _"I thought Ron was kidding about that."_

"Possible," Mr. Barkin growled as she entered and moved to sit beside Ron. "I don't remember giving you detention. Lately."

"I'm just here as moral support," she explained, claiming a seat beside Ron. "Ron's had kind of a tough day."

Kim was surprised to see that the room was empty aside from the three of them - but Mr. Barkin had still lingered here after hours, apparently just in case Ron returned from the mission in time to serve his detention. She found herself unsure whether to find his dedication praiseworthy for the unbelievable devotion it reflected, or disturbing in its obsessive single-mindedness. _"Most likely, its both."_

Mr. Barkin strode over to Ron's desk, looming menacingly over him for a time. After a small eternity, as Ron's eyes grew increasingly larger in his pale face, his gaze shifted to Ron's neck - and the naked mole rat perched on his shoulder. After another long contemplative pause, he slowly nodded. "Very well. So long as you keep him on task, I'll allow it."

"Thanks, Mr. Barkin," Ron smiled, albeit a trifle unsteadily.

"Don't thank me yet, Stoppable. I need to step out, and when I return you'd best have your nose to the grindstone. I'd hate to have to have to add a notation about _more_ detention to your records..."

"Of course not, Mr. B," Ron insisted, a bit of animation returning to his face. "You know her motto. K.P. can do anything - even 'keep me on task.'"

"For your sake, let's hope so," he growled. "Now get to work!" he barked.

Kim and Ron hurriedly dug through their backpacks, assembling the necessary books and papers. Although neither had taken their full panoply of work along on the mission, by pooling their materials, they managed to gather enough to cover the majority of their classes, and encompass the bulk of their homework. They quickly began studying - Kim rather pointedly correcting Ron when he began moving off on an unrelated tangent.

Mr. Barkin nodded his reluctant approval of Kim's dedication, before stalking from the room. "I'll be back," he promised.

As soon as Mr. Barkin had left, Ron immediately leaned back in his chair and would have relaxed, had Kim not forcibly kept him on track. _"At least he's getting back to normal,"_ she noted, with a mix of fondness and irritation.

xxxXXXxxx

Hurrying through the deserted corridors of Middleton High, Mr. Barkin was relieved that there were no witnesses to his unseemly haste. Despite the remote possibility of being seen, he still felt the situation warranted the speed.

As he neared a door, he paused, glancing around to verify he was alone. Removing a keyring from his belt, he unlocked the door and slipped inside, then double checked that it had locked behind him.

After verifying the faculty lounge was as deserted as the corridor outside, Mr. Barkin opened his wallet and withdrew a laminated business card. He turned it over, revealing the hand written number on the back. After taking a deep breath to firm his resolve he lifted the phone receiver, and dialed the number.

"Yes... Hello? Yes, Doctor. This is Steve Barkin. From Middleton High. Sorry to call so late, but you had asked... Yes. Yes. Ron Stoppable. How soon can you...? Friday? Excellent. Thank you."

xxxXXXxxx

**

To be continued...

**


	13. Theres only one sure way To bring the

**Chapter 13: There's only one sure way To bring the giant down**

xxxXXXxxx

As Mr. Barkin returned to room 12 - where his charges remained pending his return to detention - his expression (which had been carefully neutral to conceal any hint of his thoughts and plans), involuntarily twisted, flickering between disappointment, dismay, and disgust before settling into a grim mix of all three emotions. He froze just inside the doorway, his eyes glued in shock to Ron as he in turn stared blankly at the empty chalkboard - instead of listening to Kim as she read a section of her class notes aloud.

The sheer gall of Ron's disobedience of his orders - especially considering the brevity of the administrator's absence - very much rubbed Mr. Barkin the wrong way, rendering moot his attempt to mask his emotions. "Stoppable," he growled, shaking his head in dismayed disbelief. "You're a real piece of work, you know that?"

Ron's face spun to face Mr. Barkin almost comically fast at the first hint of his familiar growl, and even as the teen turned, his startled jump sent his knees crashing into the underside of his desk in an overreaction that not even Global Justice had ever been able to adequately quantify. "Ow! I wish people would quit doing that to me," Ron complained as he rubbed the stinging joints. "My knees can't take this much abuse."

Mr. Barkin didn't deign to respond to the gripe; inattention brought its own punishment, as Ron should have learned long before now. "You were supposed to keep him on task, Possible," the administrator growled, turning the full force of his glower upon the other student.

"I was! Tell him..." Kim trailed off as a nasty suspicion took root, then turned to frown at Ron. "Wait... Ron? Weren't you listening to me?"

"I don't want to hear it!" Mr. Barkin cut her off. "You _**both**_ have detention. Or should I say, _more_ detention," he informed them darkly. "Friday. After school. You **will** be here," and the edge in his voice promised dire retribution if _these_ orders were disobeyed in the slightest.

Kim opened her mouth to protest the punishment, but held herself mute. Mr. Barkin's grim expression told her the likely result of a protest - and it wasn't a _reduction_ of the penalty. "Yes, Mr. Barkin," Kim reluctantly agreed. She turned and scowled at Ron, the look hitting him with an intensity that was more powerful than a mere physical blow ever could have been when he remained silent.

At the unsubtle prompt, Ron reluctantly chimed in, flinching away from Kim's displeasure, "I know, I know, K.P. I'll be here too. It just seems like I'm always here lately," he concluded under his breath.

Kim continued to scowl at him, but didn't speak aloud, not wanting to risk running further afoul of Mr. Barkin's visibly soured mood. Nothing could prevent her from indulging in mental griping, however. _"Why is Mr. Barkin giving **me** detention? That is totally unfair; it's like our science projects all over again."_ "This is all your fault," she told Ron under her breath.

"Good," the administrator growled, ignoring the not-so-quiet comments from the peanut gallery. He glanced back and forth between the two until he was satisfied that they understood both how serious he was, and how determined he was to see them here again on Friday, then concluded, "I think we're done for tonight."

Ron blinked and looked up at the clock mounted above the chalkboard. "But we've only been here..." he began, then stopped as his eyes widened in realization. "Wait, what am I saying? Boo-yah! We're free! Let's go, K.P.!" He quickly began sifting his materials from out of the mix of books and papers in front of him, gladly getting ready to go.

Kim frowned, but after a brief hesitation slowly began to collect her books and notes as well. "You _are_ going to finish your homework when you get home, right?" she prodded Ron as she tucked her history book into her backpack.

"Sure, whatever," Ron agreed without hesitation, but his attention was clearly not on her.

Kim wondered briefly if he had even heard what she'd asked; he was obviously inattentive. "You _will_ do it, Ron," she ordered, her eyes narrowing.

"Anything you say, K.P.," Ron mumbled under his breath as he rose to his feet.

The click as Mr. Barkin stopped the counter on his stopwatch precisely as Ron's seat vacated his chair caused Kim to shake her head in disbelief - of both Ron and Mr. Barkin. _"Ron may need to focus, but Mr. Barkin **definitely** needs to throttle back on his focus."_

As the administrator wrote down the length of time Ron had served in a little notebook he pulled from his breast pocket, Kim made a mental note to cover today's material with Ron again on Friday. _"I guess we'll have plenty of time to cover it,"_ she winced in annoyance. _"But maybe putting it off until later is for the best. Homework's obviously the last thing on Ron's mind right now,"_ Kim realized.

To Kim's surprise, despite her irritation with Ron for managing to earn her detention, Ron's distraction didn't really annoy her. _"At least he's not still thinking about whatever it was that freaked him out so badly in the lair,"_ she consoled herself pragmatically. With that thought cheering her and easing her conscience about ignoring Ron's obvious intent to procrastinate, Kim rose from her seat and followed her friend out, leaving Mr. Barkin to his thoughts in the quiet solitude of detention.

xxxXXXxxx

"I'm home," Kim called out as she closed the front door of her house behind her.

"Hi, Kimmie. You're home late. Was it a mission?" her mother asked.

"Not really," Kim answered as she slipped her sneakers off beside the door. "We finished one earlier, though. It was Drakken again. No big. I was just going over Ron's homework with him while he was in detention."

"That was nice of you, dear. Ron's such a nice young man, and he seems really devoted to you."

Kim's expression shifted minutely. "I know," she answered quietly.

Kim's mother blinked at the look on her daughter's face. "Is everything all right, dear?" Mrs. Dr. Possible asked, setting aside the papers she was reading and rising to her feet. She rested a hand on her daughter's shoulder, then gently stroked the edge of Kim's lip with a finger, tracing the split and the precursor of a bruise that was blossoming beside it. "Oh my; does that hurt?" she asked sympathetically.

Kim tongued the split in her lip briefly, then shook her head, dismissive of the injury. "No, it's fine. Mom... I..." she trailed off, trying to articulate her confused thoughts and feelings.

"You know you can tell me anything," Kim's mother reassured her, ducking her head so she could look her daughter directly in the eye.

Kim's face twisted, her expression a mirror of her troubled thoughts as they swirled through her mind in a disorganized jumble of uncertainty. _"Ron was really freaked out. Why wouldn't he listen to me? Is he **really** okay, or is he hiding something that's really wrong? He was so normal for weeks before this... What was he talking about when he was screaming like that? Is he getting better? Is it normal for him to go from freaked to normal to out of it so quickly? What did Gemini do to him, anyway? Did Gemini really try to get Ron to kill me? How did Ron get so **fast**?"_

Eventually, Kim's expression cleared, even if the maelstrom of her turbulent thoughts didn't calm. Despite her uncertainty, she said only, "No, it's nothing. I guess I'm just tired."

Mrs. Dr. Possible frowned slightly, but didn't dispute Kim's patently false response as she straightened. "Well, just remember; a trouble shared is a trouble halved. Any time you want to talk - about anything at all - you know I'll be there for you."

That brought a smile to Kim's face. "Even if it's on speaker phone?"

Chuckling, her mom agreed, "Even if I'm knuckle deep in a cerebellum."

"Thanks, mom," Kim hugged her. "You rock."

"You rock too, Kimmie."

Mrs. Dr. Possible watched her visibly troubled daughter climb the stairs towards her bedroom. Returning to her papers, she mused, _"Kimberly's so self-reliant - too much so, sometimes. She should know by now that just because anything is possible for a Possible, doesn't mean she has to do it alone."_ Despite the thought, she sighed, knowing her daughter didn't see it that way.

As she returned to the case histories she was analyzing, Mrs. Dr. Possible reassured herself, _"Well, at least she has Ronald to help her."_

xoxOXOxox

Kim dropped her brown leather backpack beside her desk and let herself fall backwards onto her bed, her arms wide in a cruciform posture. Staring at the ceiling, she sighed, momentarily overtaken by a melancholic confusion. _"Ron..."_

She could never remain angry at Ron for very long; they simply had too much history together. Already the irritation Kim felt at "earning" detention was long since forgotten, but without the shielding heat of anger, her confusion and uncertainty were unclouded - and if there was one emotion Kim loathed feeling, it was uncertainty.

Looking up at the mobile from the Middleton Space Center gift shop that her father had given her on her last birthday as it dangled from the ceiling above her desk, she watched a tiny orbiter spin at the end of it's monofilament tether. As the silver space vehicle spun in its orbit, sending minuscule shards of light across her room, her thoughts were far away as she silently marvelled, _"Ron went through those henchmen like they weren't even there. And I didn't even see him move when he hit me; he was **fast**."_

Rolling over onto her stomach, Kim buried her face in the warm expanse of her pink comforter as her arms bunched the fabric into a soothing nest. _"I've never seen Ron so freaked before,"_ she thought, then was startled to realize how true the observation really was. _"I've seen him freaked out by bugs, robot horses, giant lasers, heights, mutants, self-destruct mechanisms, deathtraps, and even monkeys, and he's **never** been so out of control."_ Scowling, her expression twisted against her bedclothes. _"Ron's never tried to hit me before, either. **Gemini**..."_

Kim unconsciously tongued the inside of her split lip, feeling the almost-pain sensation as the still-healing injury stretched at the pressure. _"Ron didn't really hit **me**,"_ she thought. _"He just... reacted. And once he realized what he'd done, he... came back to himself, then... just... withdrew. Shut down. But why?"_

That she would have to help Ron work through this was patently obvious to Kim. _"Total no-brainer. I've got to help him deal. But how?"_ As much as it galled her to admit it - even to herself - Kim didn't know where to begin for something like this. _"And he didn't respond to me at all after he... went away. He only responded to Rufus. How can I help him when he gets like that if he won't listen to me? And why is he freaked out by some things, and not others?"_

After a moment's thought that failed to answer her questions, Kim levered herself off the bed and seated herself at her desk. Turning on the monitor on her computer, she watched the image of her desktop appear as the CRT slowly warmed to life. For a moment she hesitated, then her resolve firmed. _"I have to do this,"_ she reminded herself, then added, _"and I **want** to do this. Ron's my best friend, and it's my fault he's freaked. Gemini wouldn't have gone after Ron if he hadn't saved me, so it's my responsibility to help him get better again."_

With her resolve and conviction solidly reinforced, Kim's attention focused on her computer. Opening a web browser and starting a search engine, Kim carefully entered "'brain sifter' flashback symptom" in the text box, then hit enter. Scrolling down the resultant list of sites, she bypassed the first six results (that they linked to pornographic sites was obvious from either the text of the links or the summaries displayed), as well as the next two (_"What kind of a name is that for a band?"_). After passing over these entries, she found a link that looked promising - one that led to a page on the NIMH website. She clicked on the link.

As the page slowly began to display on her monitor, Kim frowned at the speed of the download - or more precisely, the lack of it. _"Using the Kimmunicator would be faster than this - but that would tell Wade everything I'm doing. It's not like he can't figure out what I'm doing even when I work on this machine though, but... Will he figure it out anyway? Or bother to check? And does it matter?"_ Remembering Wade's expression when she had called for extraction from Drakken's volcanic lair, she wondered, _"Or does Wade know what I'm thinking about already? Should I ask him what he thinks? Will he tell GJ that Ron's still having issues?"_

She eventually resolved to set her concerns about Wade's thoughts aside for now. _"I'll have to think about it. Wade usually does what I tell him to do, anyway, so it shouldn't matter."_

At length, the web page finished loading, and setting aside her uncertainty, Kim determinedly began to read. "Brain-Sifter ('brAn(-)'sift-er)..."

xxxXXXxxx

"One lump or two?"

The man's voice startled Ron, coming as it did from nowhere. Because of the darkness, Ron eventually realized his eyes were closed, so he opened them.

Ron blinked as the light set his eyes aching. "What?" he asked, blinking furiously. As his vision slowly cleared, the man standing beside Ron politely hefted his tray, calling attention to the white ceramic teapot steaming contentedly from its position atop his upraised hand.

Confused, Ron looked more closely at the man. He was thin, and what little of his hair remained was as white as the falling snow Ron could see through the frost-kissed window across the room. Despite his jovial smile and friendly demeanor, Ron somehow knew he had never met the man before in his life. _"What the...?"_ Ron wondered as he stared into the man's hazel eyes. _"Who is he?"_

"One lump or two?" the man repeated, still smiling cheerily.

Ron abruptly realized he was gaping at the man, and closed his mouth with a click as his teeth met. He apologetically mumbled, "Um... two. Thanks, I guess."

"It's what I'm here for," the man answered with a grin. Setting aside his tray, he lifted the teapot and positioned it over the cup that Ron abruptly noticed rested on a table in front of him. "Would you like to do the honors?"

"What?" Ron asked in confusion.

Smiling, the man turned his arm, offering Ron the teapot's handle.

"Nah, go ahead," Ron instructed, still feeling croggled.

The man chuckled, and pressed a dark green button on the side of the pot that Ron hadn't noticed before. With a faintly mechanical burr that flickered at the edges of Ron's memory with a sense of familiarity, a steady stream of molten cheese poured out of the bottom of the teapot, filling Ron's cup.

Ron stared as his cup slowly filled with steaming processed cheese product. His nostrils flared at the familiar scent of Bueno Nacho's finest cheese sauce.

When the cup was full, the man returned the teapot to the tray. Picking up a pair of glittering metallic tongs in his freed hand, he then proceeded to lift two small cubes of cheddar from the serving tray, and drop them into the steaming yellow sauce. The cubes sank into the sauce but didn't fully submerge, forming islands of a deeper orange in the semi-fluid liquid.

"Embrace the nog."

Hefting the tray after making the cryptic comment, the man casually walked away, ignoring Ron's confused, "What are you talking about?"

Boggled and uncertain Ron could only watch as the man marched off, leaving the warm scent of cheese floating in an inviting and almost tangible trail behind him. The door the man passed through swung shut with a solid finality behind him, and Ron found himself alone.

Without other distractions, Ron glanced down into his cup. Atop the mellow orange of the cheese sauce, the cheddar cubes had dissociated, leaving a swirl of oily red-orange floating on the surface. Ron casually lifted the cup, his pinky extended as he held the delicate handle, which seemed far too small for his fingers, and carefully took a drink of the steaming brew.

His eyes widened in surprised delight. _"Delicious,"_ Ron marvelled as he licked his lips - both to savor the residue and to ensure that he didn't miss the smallest bit.

Setting aside his drink, Ron suddenly realized he was seated in his own dining room. With that realization came the startling discovery that he was also seated at the head of the table - where his father sat on those few instances where they actually ate together like a normal family. He briefly contemplated moving to his usual spot along one side, but for some reason sitting where he was felt natural, so he remained.

From the archway leading to the living room, he could hear the TV - and the familiar, beloved sound of Snowman Hank. As the faint but enthusiastic cry of "embrace your fellow maaaaan..." drifted to his ears, Ron rose and walked over to the arched opening.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, while a clockwork Santa waved his beard's white hair. The Christmas tree glittered with ornaments and lights in a rainbow of hues, while the menorah on the sideboard flickered, all nine candles glowing and new. Snowman Hank strummed his ukelele singing about the meaning of friendship from the TV, while a ceramic Rudolph's nose glimmered with glee.

And Frederick in his spacesuit, and Chippy in her Nana dress... - Ron blinked in surprise - ...were snuggled by the fireplace sipping cheese nog from hollowed out coconut shells. When the simian celebrants noticed Ron's arrival, Frederick lifted his tropical glass in salute, then pressed a few buttons on his wrist. **( Ook )** a synthetic voice announced.

Ron smiled as the simian astronaut lightly tapped his coconut glass against the monkey ninja's as they raised them in a silent toast to their host. "Ook eek," he told the monkeys cheerily. _"Those crazy monkeys,"_ he thought fondly.

As Ron spoke, the lights on the tree abruptly began to glow blue; even the string of chaser lights surrounding the Magen David perched on the pinnacle of the tree began to burn with a constant blue light, the simulated motion of the blinking lights stilled. At that moment, the sound of glasses clinking together coming from behind him made Ron realize that someone was in the kitchen - and that wonderful smells were emanating from within. "Mother? Need help?" he called as he turned, all but drooling in anticipation of the feast to come.

"I've got it, dear," a woman's voice called back.

Ron blinked. _"That's not mom,"_ Ron wondered in surprise. His brow furrowed, but before he could think more on the strangeness oddity, he was distracted by a call.

"Boys!" the woman's voice called out, louder and sharper and comfortingly familiar. "Dinner's ready!"

Arm in arm, Frederick and Chippy walked past Ron into the dining room, and as Ron turned to follow, a blur of red and green raced by, brushing against him and all but spinning him in place. Ron paused as the monkeys seated themselves along one side of the rectangular table and the Possible twins seated themselves at the other.

_"Why are the tweebs' eyes green?"_ Ron wondered as he slowly returned to his place at the head of the table. _"Aren't their eyes blue? And did they bleach their hair?"_

"Who's hungry?" the woman's voice called out from the kitchen, the question cheery and bright with anticipation.

"We are!" the tweebs called. The monkeys smiled at each other, and Frederick reached out to hold Chippy's hand in his.

Ron licked his lips as he took another drink of cheese nog. Though it was hard to imagine how it could have been possible, the aromas coming from the kitchen smelled even more appetizing than before. And although he'd never contemplated drinking cheese nog - the marvelous mix of Bueno Nacho cheese sauce with just a dash of cheddar - before, he made a mental note to have it again - it tasted _wonderful_.

_Ron?_

Ron?

**"RON!"**

"I'm hungry, too," Ron called out, sitting up in his seat. "It smells great!"

Kim eyed Ron worriedly from her position beside him on the bench seat. "Didn't you eat before we got in the helicopter?"

Looking frantically around, Ron blinked in confusion. "What are you talking about?" he asked. "It's time for Christmas dinner. Try the cheese nog; it's won-der-ful," he added, slurring his words slightly. Although he was mostly awake, his eyelids were still drooping, heavy with slumber.

Chuckling, Kim asked teasingly, "Have a nice dream?"

Scrubbing his face with his palms, the familiar feel and smell of his mission gloves brushed away some of Ron's confusion. "It was all a dream?" he asked uncertainly.

"Sounds like it," Kim told him gently. "Was it a good one?" she asked.

"It was Christmas dinner at my house," Ron dreamily answered, closing his eyes to help recapture the fading feeling of joy. "The tweebs were there... and Frederick and Chippy... it was snowing... Snowman Hank was on TV..."

"It sounds nice," Kim admitted. "Think your mom will let you do something for Christmas at your house this year?"

Ron rubbed his eyes, clearing granules of dried grit from the corners. "No," he sadly denied. "But it was so nice... It just felt so _real_..." he told her dreamily.

"Well, it's time to wake up and get your head in the game," Kim told him firmly, straightening her back as she patted his thigh in commiseration. "Señor Senior, Senior isn't going to surrender on his own, and we have to recover the stolen prototype."

"I guess," Ron mumbled, his eyes unfocused. Something about the dream teased at the edge of his mind, but he couldn't quite figure out why he felt so... saddened at awakening. He licked his lips, tasting a phantom memory of cheese and cheese, his nose tantalized by the scent of cooking dinner, and the sense of the holidays in the air.

"Focus, Ron," Kim ordered. She turned Ron's face with one hand so that his gaze met hers. "You with me, partner?" she asked.

Ron blinked, and his eyes met hers as the memory faded like so much pixie dust, leaving only a vague disappointment like a sour aftertaste across his thoughts. "Yeah," he nodded, shaking himself fully awake as he pulled his chin from her grasp. "I'm ready."

"Good," Kim nodded in satisfaction, shifting into mission mode herself. "Let's get suited up. Remember, we're taking a stealth approach this time."

Nodding his acceptance, Ron joined Kim in slipping a drysuit on over his mission clothes. The job was hampered by the close quarters and the tightness of the material, but they were well accustomed to irregular methods of transportation and making do with available space.

Despite the difficulty of the process, the familiar routine of checks of connections, straps, and gauges helped banish the last traces of the dream from Ron's mind. He shifted his shoulders, settling the suit more snugly around his neck while giving his arms more freedom of movement. He turned in his seat and as Kim strapped on her fins, he tightened a strap under her left arm, securing the small, emergency air tank more securely to the small of her back. He settled his own, then leaned back in his seat as best he could with the tank strapped to his back.

The rubbery material of his flippers squeaked as he slid his slip-booted feet into them, but the straps to hold them onto his feet snapped into place reassuringly easily. Ron tucked his mission gloves into a waterproof carryall, then pulled on a specialized pair of swim gloves.

Ron flexed his fingers, spreading the membranous webbing on the gloves. With his hands inside the grey material of the gloves, they looked oddly batrachian, and Ron's gaze was riveted to them as he slowly spread his fingers, watching the flexion and movement of the webbing as he did.

Kim paused in her own efforts as she watched Ron gaze intently at his gloves. "Are you going to be okay for the swim to Senior's island?" she asked worriedly, resting her hand on his shoulder.

Ron shrugged, and Kim's hand slid slickly across his rubbery suit before dropping off. "Sure. Why wouldn't I be?"

Despite her attempts to research Ron's condition, Kim felt she was no closer to a solution to his problems. Ron was simultaneously both too extreme and too normal in his reactions, and the odd dichotomy negated all the recommendations and diagnostic information about treatment that she had been able to find online. _"Ron freaks out - breakdown flashback total withdrawal freakout - at the strangest things... Touching my face, Shego's plasma... But he's just fine with other things that I'd have thought would be much more likely to freak him out. I just don't understand him - or this,"_ she admitted silently.

_"I wish I could get a hold of GJ's full report on Ron - especially the psyche profile,"_ Kim thought as she pulled on her balaclava styled cowl and tucked her hair inside, _"but I don't want Dr. Director or Wade getting suspicious by asking for it."_ The thought of losing Ron to either additional GJ testing or a medical facility rated somewhere close to apocalyptic in her thoughts. _"I need him,"_ she admitted to herself, but chose not to question how or why too closely.

Kim pensively returned Ron's shrug, distracted by her unspoken concerns as Ron continued gearing up having shaken off his own distraction. _"Still, if he's not worried about it, I'm certainly not going to remind him about what happened the last time we were in the ocean,"_ she wryly thought. "Oh, no reason," she answered shortly.

_"I wish Rufus was here, but he really looked sick this morning,"_ Kim worried. _"Who knew there would be a kind of cheese that he couldn't stomach? And with all the things he eats - including five-alarm Diablo sauce - why would a mellow cheese like Jarlsburg hit him so hard?"_

A voice from the front of the compartment abruptly snapped Kim out of her troubled thoughts. "We're nearing the drop zone, Miss Possible," the pilot called over his shoulder.

As the pilot turned, and his sunglasses slipped lower on his nose, Ron felt an odd sense of familiarity as his eyes met the white-haired pilot's hazel gaze. _"Do I know him?"_ he wondered silently.

"Okay," Kim answered. "When we get there, hover as low as you can and we'll jump out," she told him. "And thanks again for the lift, Mr. Guy."

"Oh, please," the pilot dismissed her thanks with a casual wave of one hand as he turned back to the controls. "After the way you saved my tour business, it's the least I can do."

"It was no big," Kim replied, equally as dismissive of her efforts. "Aerial tours of the islands was the obvious solution."

The steady rumble of the engines shifted into a deeper register and through the curved canopy, the wine-dark waters of the Mediterranean grew closer. "Here we are," the pilot announced, easing back on the throttle to bring the helicopter into a stationary hover over the sea.

Kim opened the side door, letting in the salt smell of the water and a mist of spray kicked up by the downward force of the spinning rotors. "Let's go, Ron." She edged out the door, bracing herself on the landing skid while holding tightly to the door handle for support.

As Ron clambered across the seat to join her, pulling his cowl over his head as he went, the chopper rocked as their shifting weight unbalanced the hover, but the experienced pilot quickly leveled the craft. Kim swung the door shut as Ron backed cautiously towards the rear of the helicopter, his flippered feet flapping and flopping against the textured metal of the skid.

Kim tested the latch to verify the door had sealed. She couldn't hear the click of the mechanism closing above the noise of the engine and rotors, so she was compelled to pause to check it manually. Once she was sure the door had been made fast, Kim waved a final time to the pilot through the side window. When he flashed a cheery thumbs up in response, she turned to grin at Ron. "Let's go!" she ordered.

Ron obediently jumped, holding his equipment tightly against his body and keeping himself braced for the small impact as he went in. Kim smiled in pleased surprise as Ron knifed into the water as beautifully as an Olympic high diver, the small splash his body generated instantly washed away by the chop. _"Nice one,"_ she grinned. _"He usually isn't that smooth."_ Kim waited for Ron to surface, then stepped from the skid to join him in the water, taking care to aim herself well away from him as she fell, while also making sure to distance herself from the chopper's movements as the sudden loss of her weight caused it too rock.

She plunged deeply into the Mediterranean, exhaling heavily through her nose to purge the sudden influx of water from her nostrils as she sank. The water swiftly ate her momentum, and she could feel the resistance against her flippers in her ankles. When her descent into the depths finally halted, she kicked her legs strongly, propelling herself back towards the surface.

Gasping as she breached the surface, Kim sent a fine spray of glittering droplets cascading through the air. Treading water as she rose and fell with the swelling of the waves, Kim waved goodbye to Mr. Guy, then watched as the 'copter waggled back and forth to return the wave before flying off.

A small splash caught Kim's attention and she rotated her body with a few gentle kicks of her finned feet to face Ron as he dogpaddled closer. "Where to, K.P.?" he asked.

Kim's gaze raked across the horizon before suddenly stopping. "That way," she pointed, absolute surety in her voice.

Ron's head turned to follow her pointing finger, but the certainty of her selection of direction confused him. "How can you tell?" he wondered aloud, blinking as a wave splashed across his eyes.

"Junior's lamp. You can see the glow if you look carefully," Kim answered with a chuckle. "You ready?"

Ron dunked his goggles into the water to clean the condensation from the lenses, then pulled the white rubber strap over his head. He seated the lenses over his eyes, then checked the mouthpiece on his aqualung before returning it to the catch on his harness. His final equipment checks complete, he answered, "All set, K.P."

Kim grinned as she performed the same series of checks and preparations, then told him, "Let's go." She kicked powerfully with her flippered feet, lifting herself partially out of the water like a porpoise before striking out for the distant glow of the Seniors' latest island lair. Ron's start was less graceful, but soon he was swimming along, moving in Kim's wake.

Ron's awkward cross between the breast-stroke and butterfly was far more irregular and choppy than her polished and precise strokes, but perfectly sufficient for him to keep up with the relatively easy pace she set. They swam in silence, aided by the sea's current as it streamed towards the distant Pillars of Hercules and the Atlantic beyond.

Much to Kim's relief, Ron seemed as untroubled by the swim as he had been in the helicopter. _"I'm glad he's handling it so well,"_ she thought as she rolled onto her back to shift swimming styles, unconsciously compensating for the buoyancy of her small airtank.

While on her back, out of the corner of her eyes, she watched Ron as he swam gamely along beside her. To her surprise, Ron's movements had become much more fluid than his usual. _"He's getting good at this,"_ she realized. _"He's not fighting the water as much."_ "How's it going, Ron?" she asked.

Ron's head bobbed momentarily over the crest of a wave as he paused at Kim's question, breaking his rhythm. "Going fine," he grunted, then sputtered as his mouth filled with seawater. "Still fine," he asserted, sticking out his tongue as he spat out the brine.

Wincing, Kim paused and let herself drift as Ron briefly floundered. "Oops. Sorry, Ron. Didn't mean to distract you."

"No... Pbtbltpt..." Ron briefly sputtered like a dying motorboat before concluding, "big," as he emptied his mouth once more. After a brief hesitation, he regained his rhythm, and they resumed their stealthy approach to the island.

A beep coming from inside her drysuit's carryall returned Kim's focus to the mission at hand. "Okay, Ron. We're inside the outer defense zone," she warned aloud, slowing to match her pace to Ron's. "So watch out for sentry buoys. If Wade was right, there shouldn't be any along our route, but they do drift, so be careful."

"Gotcha," Ron answered briefly, concentrating more on his swimming than on Kim's words.

Kim rolled onto her back again before wordlessly pointing past Ron. He glanced in that direction, but after spotting the floating sentry drifting further away, he just nodded in acknowledgement of the warning as she rolled in the water, shifting stroke styles once more.

After a time, as the seafloor gradually rose beneath them and the color of the water lightened, a muted double beep heralded, "Inner defense zone. Danger time. Watch for the mines."

"No pressure," Ron mumbled, but continued on without breaking the rhythm of his strokes.

_"Ron's definitely getting the hang of this,"_ Kim noted with pride. Although still occasionally awkward, in general his strokes had become as smooth and graceful as hers, and his kicks were much more powerful and focused - propelling him through the water very efficiently. _"He's keeping up with me this time - or even better,"_ she suddenly realized. _"I've been swimming faster than usual, and he's **still** kept up."_

Making a mental note to remember to congratulate him on his improvement, she concentrated on watching for mines, the better to help Ron keep his own concentration on swimming. As they passed through the inner, more dangerous defensive ring surrounding the Seniors' island lair, Kim was pleased with Wade's job of selecting their infiltration route. She spotted only anti-ship mines rather than anti-personnel mines as they swam towards the island, and even those were far too distant from the course they were threading to be a threat.

As they neared the island, the tidal surge began to assist the swimmers, pushing them towards a sandy beach near the southernmost tip. At length, an incoming wave picked them up in a watery grasp, and as the seafloor swiftly rose beneath them, the wave rapidly built up speed. Team Possible was carried in the sea's embrace over the few remaining obstacles and deposited gently onto the sandy slope in a swirling wash of foam and bubbles as the wave disintegrated on the shoreline.

Even as she slipped her feet out of her flippers, Kim quickly drew Ron away from the open expanse of beach, and into the protective shelter of the base of a low cliff, finding a rocky nook well past the tide's reach. She impatiently tugged Ron along as he hopped after her, one foot still stuck inside a flipper.

Once the duo were safely out of the open, and consequently much less visible, Kim knelt, and by working together, they were finally able to clear Ron's foot from the tangled knot of its safety strap. "Got it," Ron breathed in relief, gladly tossing his swim fins beside Kim's on the sandy ground.

Rising to her feet, Kim pulled her swim goggles over her head and dropped them negligently atop the pile of flippers before stripping off her gloves. "Let's get ready. You did good on the way in, Ron," she praised. "Have you been practicing?"

Ron doffed his own goggles and peeled off the hood of his drysuit. He rubbed at his revealed scalp with both hands, ruffling his matted hair before responding. "Nope, I haven't even been to the pool in a long time. I've been too busy with detention and mission stuff."

"That's kind of funny," Kim mused as she pulled her own cowl free, releasing the crimson cascade of her hair. "You looked way improved - when I wasn't distracting you, anyway," she explained as she combed her hair back with her fingers, brushing her dampened bangs from her forehead.

"I dunno," Ron shrugged, wholly unconcerned about it. "Swimming just felt more... natural than usual for some reason."

Ron quickly turned his back as Kim drew the top half of her drysuit off over her head - unintentionally bringing the hem of her mission shirt along with it. With his back turned, he started stripping off his own drysuit, trying to ignore the occasional squeaks as rubberized material rubbed against itself and the irritated grumbles that came from behind him.

Kim grunted as the rubbery material clung tenaciously to her skin and her mission shirt. "No more off the rack gear," she muttered. "The stuff Wade makes always works _so_ much better."

"We could have just gone with the wetsuits and changed once we hit the island," Ron pointed out while loosening a strap on his carryall.

Snorting, Kim dismissed the idea out of hand. "You know how long it takes to dry this hair? Never mind. Just remind me not to forget the baby powder next time we wear these," Kim instructed. "It makes changing out of these things tons easier." She exhaled heavily with relief as she gladly discarded the inside-out top half of her drysuit. Once free of the tangled suit, she quickly adjusted her clothing, pulling her shirt back down over her sports bra while straightening the hem.

"Whatever you say, K.P." Ron agreed, glancing down at his gloved hands. _"They made swimming feel so natural,"_ he thought distractedly. Eventually, despite the weirdness he felt as he looked at them, he replaced the swim gloves with his ordinary grey leather mission gloves.

When he had finished stripping off his gear, and was properly attired for infiltration, Ron piled his discarded equipment somewhat haphazardly beside the rockface, weighing down the cowl and gloves with the unused air tank so it could be collected later.

Since Kim hadn't yet told him it was safe to turn around, Ron limited the range of his movements. He stretched, feeling the burn of exertion from the long swim in the muscles of his chest and shoulders as he twisted and turned, stretching out the aches while keeping his face averted from his potentially unclothed friend. "Hmm... Smell that?"

"Smell what?" Kim asked from behind him.

"The ocean," Ron breathed deeply, drinking in the scents of sun, sand, and surf as he gazed across the rocky shore and the broad vista of the Mediterranean beyond. "One of these days, we should move to the beach somewhere. It would be totally badical to live in a place like this... be able to smell this everyday... see the water... feel the wind." He closed his eyes, savoring the ambience. "Swim everyday..."

"Our parents might have something to say about that," Kim wryly noted, but Ron could tell she was amused. "Not to mention how much it would cost to have our very own private island." _"He's in a rare mood. What brought this on?"_ she wondered.

Ron waved away her protest dismissively. "Dad can work anywhere. Anyway, wouldn't it be great?"

"I'll suggest it at the next Possible game night," Kim chuckled. "Ready to face the Seniors?"

"I guess," Ron admitted, tentatively turning back before relaxing when he saw that Kim was indeed ready. "We should get moving before the tide comes in any further. That stretch," he pointed past Kim to a slope leading towards the island's interior, "will be submerged when the tide rolls in, and I'd rather not swim now that we've ditched the suits."

Kim blinked as she looked where Ron indicated. The bare expanse of beach at the foot of the slope looked little different than any other stretch; there were no obvious indications one way or the other what the rising tide would do to it. "How can you tell?" she wondered aloud.

"I... don't know," Ron hesitantly admitted. "I just do," he shrugged helplessly, unable to explain himself any better.

"O...kay," Kim agreed, stretching the syllables dubiously. "Well, let's go." She walked towards the slope, following the cliff's contours.

Ron followed her, his brow furrowed as he thought about his strange conviction. As they neared the base of the slope, he almost collided with Kim's back as she stopped in her tracks.

"Good eye, Ron," she praised.

"What?"

"The sand. See? It's swept smooth. And the side of the cliff is discolored; you can see the high water mark. You must have seen it as we came in, and realized what it meant. Nice job."

"Uh...thanks... I think," Ron mumbled to himself as he continued following Kim as she started climbing the steep grade. _"I don't remember seeing any of those things. But I must have, right?"_

Beneath their feet, the natural slope formed by the runoff from the highlands of the island as it eroded the cliff face slanted sharply upwards as they climbed. The going was difficult, but not impassable, and the thin rubber boots they'd worn beneath their flippers found good traction on the uneven texture of the slope.

Upon reaching the top, and after passing through a grove of trees - the vegetation far too sparse to really be described as forest or woods, they reached the wall surrounding Señor Senior, Senior's island lair. The smooth concrete wall loomed high above them - higher than even Kim could leap, and the loops of razor wire and spikes surmounting it made going over it an even more daunting challenge.

Kim glanced briefly down at the hair dryer-slash-grappling gun she'd drawn from her side pocket, then turned her gaze back to the gleaming razor edges on the coils atop the wall. "Hmm," she thought aloud, then reluctantly shook her head as she returned the device to her pocket. "Nah, the line would just get cut."

Her eyes followed the wall as it receded into the distance, first in one direction, then the other. The wall was utterly implacable and impassible for as far as her eyes could see in either direction, and the sheer uniformity of the expanse made finding a flaw in the barrier seem unlikely. She was still contemplating the possible options when Ron's voice interrupted her thoughts.

"We could always knock."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

Ron pointed ahead, to the shadow of a curve in the wall. A small metal door, recessed into the wall, was all but invisible in the deep shade.

_"How could I miss that?"_ Kim berated herself. After a moment's self-flagellation, she cautiously approached the door, Ron hard on her heels.

"'Knock for admittance; ring bell for deadly peril,'" Ron read the small sign posted beside the door aloud. "I for one vote for knocking."

"It's so obviously a trap, Ron," Kim exasperatedly chided.

"Well, yeah," Ron agreed, "But he tells you so right there," he pointed to the sign. "It was nice of him to warn us about it, too. You have to admit, Senior has class."

Kim rolled her eyes and reached for the door bell. Ron's hand grabbed her wrist before she could touch the button. "Deadly peril, K.P." he warned her seriously. "Deadly. Peril," he enunciated slowly.

Scowling, Kim kept her finger aimed for the bell as she rounded on her partner. "Trust me, Ron. _Knocking_ is the trap. It's how these things work."

"I don't know," Ron hesitated, reluctant to go against her wishes, but just as leery of ignoring the sign's warning. "It just seems too trappish."

Kim didn't bother trying to convince him further. As he visibly dithered between the possibilities, she simply reached around the block of his body and pressed the button with her other hand.

As they fell through the trapdoor that abruptly opened beneath them, Ron's cry of, "I told you, K.P. ... Deadly peril!" echoed down the chasm, chasing their falling forms.

xxxXXXxxx

Kim scowled as she fell, irritated both at Señor Senior, Senior for building the trap, and herself for falling for it - literally. _"I should have guessed either action would trigger it,"_ she berated herself silently.

Still falling, she reached into the side pocket of her cargo pants and drew her grappling gun. Reaching out with her free hand, she snagged Ron by his collar, drawing his flailing form closer. "Get ready," she tersely ordered, then pulled the trigger, shooting a grapnel up towards the trap door high above.

The sudden stop as the grappling gun arrested their fall was jarring. Kim felt a wrench as Ron's weight pulled on one arm, and their combined weight pulled on the other.

Ron simply gagged as his knit collar tightened around his throat. "Can't... breathe..." he forced out around the noose of black material that was suddenly strangling him. He clutched at Kim's legs and tried to climb up the length of her body in an attempt to loosen the stranglehold she had on him.

From somewhere overhead, a sudden metallic flash erupted from the side of the chasm. The stress on Kim's shoulders vanished as the tension in the lifeline disappeared, and their fall abruptly resumed. "Hey! No fair," Kim shouted as she watched the blade slowly retract back into the wall, having cleanly severed her line.

Releasing her grip on Ron, Kim reached into another pocket to find a replacement grapnel, but before she could fix the grappling gun, the duo's fall came to a sudden end. Green- tinted and slightly phosphorescent water erupted in titanic twin columns as the pair plunged into a deep pool at the bottom of the abyssal fall.

As they fought their way back to the surface, the water they'd thrown into the air at impact began to splash down on top of them - and onto the jagged rocks and the stony ledges surrounding the pool's periphery. Grumbling, Kim swam through the brief, but intense shower to the largest visible ledge and pulled herself out of the water. She awkwardly brushed at her clothing, dislodging some of the moisture, but concurrently making an unpleasant squelching sound. As Ron climbed up beside her, Kim squeezed what water she could from her drenched clothing, her expression sour.

"Hey!" Ron protested as she wrung the hem of her shirt out above his head.

"Sorry, Ron," she scowled. She was thoroughly tweaked as she brushed her drenched locks away from her eyes. _"So much for using the drysuits,"_ she thought irritably.

"Eh, no big," Ron soothed, backing down in the face of her anger.

A faint mechanical whirring came from somewhere high above. The pair glanced up, but even with the dim illumination provided by the glowing water, the source of the noise was indeterminate in the gloom.

Before their speculations could run too far afield, a small silver orb sank into view. The whirring deepened in tone as it began to hover, and small orifices appeared as irises opened around the circumference. From one of the new openings, a beam of light was projected, and in the air above them, a 15 foot square holographic image appeared.

"Greetings, Kim Possible," the titanic image of Señor Senior, Senior politely greeted them from the projected hologram.

Kim scowled, but Ron waved cheerily. "Don't forget me, sidekick, here."

"But of course; how could I possibly forget Ron Stoppable? I was most distressed to learn that you no longer perform with the 'Oh Boyz.' While hardly the aficionado of the genre that my son is, I would be the first to admit that your dancing was far and away superior to the others in that group."

"Thanks," Ron wiped a hint of moisture from one eye, moved almost beyond words by the praise.

"And I am pleased as well to see you so thoroughly recovered from your recent travails with Gemini," the older gentleman continued.

"What are...?" Ron began, but Kim interrupted before he could continue.

"Never mind about that," she cut Ron off. "What's your game, Señor?" she demanded.

"Such rudeness," the image clucked his tongue as he shook his head reprovingly.

"She's not usually like this," Ron explained. "She's sometimes bossy, but not usually rude. She's just a little tweaked at the moment."

"Ron!" Kim protested. "I am so not bossy!" she insisted. "Now help me figure a way out of here."

"Now, now," Senior chortled malevolently. "There's no need to fight amongst yourselves. After all, I have gone to a great deal of trouble to bring you to this place - trouble both in time and expense. Building this lair, stealing the experimental solar cell, baiting the trap..."

"I told you it smelled trappish," Ron commented.

"Enough about the trap! Ron, the sign outright _said_ it was a trap. I just didn't realize what _kind_ of trap it was," she scowled quellingly.

Unnoticed, bubbles began to rise to the surface in the center of the glowing pool. Ripples spread from the source of the disruption, the motion of the water obscuring what lay beneath even more than the oddly colored and luminous fluid already did.

"You see," Senior noted proudly, his eyes glowing with vitality despite his greying hair and wrinkled skin, "I had a vision. A dream of an epic struggle... of a combat as old as mankind. A battle pitting man against nature - or to be precise, _woman_ against nature." He suddenly frowned, and lost some of his poise as he grumbled, "And you, Miss Possible, failed to bring my dream to life."

Under the water, a hint of swirling green was briefly seen as something approached the surface. Green and dark green writhed with an obscene muscularity before vanishing once more beneath the frothing ripples.

The disturbance in the water had grown too active to ignore, and both Kim and Ron looked away from the projection as a burst of rising bubbles splashed loudly. The foamy eruption in the center of the pool sent rippling waves washing across the pool to crash against the rocks and ledges.

"This would be the deadly peril part, right?" Ron asked, mostly to himself as the foamy wave lapped at his boots.

Señor Senior, Senior chose to interpret Ron's rhetorical question as one directed towards himself. "Oh, yes," he answered, his lips creasing into a self-satisfied smile that fairly dripped with maleficence as he leaned closer to the camera's lens, magnifying the size of his face in the projection. "Deadly peril indeed," he chortled villainously.

A long section of tentacle briefly breached the surface before submerging once more, hiding beneath the glowing water. _"Not good,"_ Kim thought distantly, even as she readied herself for the coming fight.

(Note 1) 

Ron flinched away from the frothing water, but Kim was relieved to note that it was his normal fear reaction and not the blind, panicky, flashback sort of fear she was becoming increasingly anxious to banish from her friend. _"I hope I never see it again,"_ she found time to think, before setting aside all distractions in preparation for combat.

From the foamy depths of the pool, a green dome slowly emerged, a tiger-striped pattern of darker green rippling across the glistening surface as the luminous water trickled down the sloping shape. As Kim watched with concern, an eye with a slitted pupil opened in the side of the domed shape - an eye larger than her head. A nictitating membrane flickered across the eye, blinking as the water trickled down, shed by the rising form of the enormous ovoid head.

As the head rose even further above the water's surface, a fanged maw cleared the water, slime and foam dripping from the dagger-like fangs that filled the mouth of the hideous creature. Tentacles breached the surface to coil around rocky protrusions along the periphery of the cavern, flexing and bulging as the striped coloration on the arms twisted and writhed, causing the saw-toothed suction cups that ran the length and breadth of the underside of the limbs to snap open and closed like tiny suckling mouths.

Despite the horrid appearance and the monstrous size of the creature, both Kim and Ron visibly relaxed as it rose from the water. "A mutant octopus?" Ron shook his head in disbelief and disparagement. "That's your idea of 'deadly peril?' Dude, that is so lame. And here I was getting all worked up, when it's just another mutant octopus."

"Don't knock it when a villain makes a mistake, Ron," Kim reminded him as the octopus continued to rise, revealing it was far, far larger than the last such that she had faced. "Just because we know its weakness is no reason to get complacent." _"That's one **big** octopus,"_ her eyes involuntarily widened as it continued to rise, gnashing its fangs menacingly.

"You are quite correct about the dangers of complacency, my young nemesis," Senior agreed, "but as it happens, you are both wrong in your taxonomic identification." He chuckled ominously as he added, "For this is not a simple mutant octopus."

As the full mass of the creature's body breached the surface, Kim's eyes widened in shocked dismay. _"What in the world is **that**?"_

"You see, my feisty foe, I was most disappointed when you failed to realize my vision of a life and death struggle. So, after a great deal more trouble and expense..."

"You made a cyborg mutant octopus?" Kim demanded, staring at the lights blinking from the metallic alloy plating that covered the bottom of the monstrous cephalopod. The robotic components extended from the central mass out over the base of the tentacles - incidentally protecting the vulnerable and highly sensitive nerve clusters that Kim had used to defeat the last mutant octopus they had encountered by tickling it into submission. _"And how weird is it that I've seen more than **one** giant mutant octopus?"_

"That is just sick and wrong," Ron mumbled, staring at the titanic creature and the robotic components grafted to it. "On so many levels."

"I would be a poor businessman indeed did I not learn from my mistakes," the billionaire villain pointed out. "And so I had to adapt to truly make my vision come to life. Now, I anticipate a battle for the ages," he paused portentously, then added, "Farewell, Kim Possible, I look forward to a magnificent struggle. I hope you do not disappoint me once again."

With that, the hologram winked out and the glittering orb that had acted as the projector rose, vanishing up the shaft and away from the imminent combat.

xxxXXXxxx

In another part of his lair, Señor Senior, Senior leaned back in his throne-like chair, causing the rich, Corinthian leather that sheathed the cushion to creak in protest at the shift in weight. The billionaire's eyes roved across the wall of monitors in front of him, drinking in every detail of the impending conflict that the dozens of hidden cameras inside the cavern revealed to him.

"Oh, yes," he breathed, "It is just as I hoped it would be." He leaned forward in eager anticipation, resting his hands on the head of his cane as he waited for the struggle to commence with bated breath.

xxxXXXxxx

The octopus roared, baring its fangs as a blue electrical aura erupted around its cybernetic implants. The lid lowered slightly above the monstrous eye as the halo of electricity flickered out.

The slitted pupil narrowed as it focused upon Kim. The muscles in the tentacles visibly tensed as the colossal head shifted slightly, turning to directly face her. The fangs gleamed as they interlocked as the maw flexed.

Kim leaped into the air as the end of a tentacle abruptly thundered down onto the ledge where she'd been standing. Fragments of rock, sundered by the force of the blow, clattered down onto the ledge and pattered against the water as the rings of muscles in the flexible limb tightened in readiness for another attack.

Ron was thrown from his feet by the force of the impact, slamming his head bruisingly against the wall. "Ow," he whined, slowly sitting up and rubbing at the injured spot on his forehead.

Despite his vulnerability, Ron was ignored by the combatants as the octopus turned to follow the arc of Kim's leap, its single eye locked to her every move. As Kim reached the pinnacle of her jump, Ron suddenly yelled, "K.P.! Look out!"

Kim quickly looked around at Ron's cry, and spotted the tentacle heading her way. With limited options as she fell, she shifted her weight and position, altering her trajectory - not by much, but just barely enough to evade the blow.

After missing its target, the tentacle slammed into the cavern wall opposite the ledge Ron knelt on. Dust rained down, shaken loose from the walls of the abyss above, and a fine network of cracks spread across the wall, forming a roughly rectangular shape in the uneven and rocky surface.

_"Hidden door,"_ Kim noted silently as she landed in a crouch atop a jagged boulder. _"Once the octopus goes down, we are so out of here."_ Before she could do more than recognize the egress, she had to leap from her new perch as a blow from another tentacle crushed it into flinders.

Kim dodged blow after blow, and despite the fury of the tentacles' attacks, she managed to land a few kicks and punches on the creature - mostly to the tentacles. Even with the strength and power of Kim's attacks, the blows appeared to do little more than further infuriate the octopus.

With the octopus' eye locked onto Kim, Ron found himself ignored even as the combat escalated. The tentacle that had crashed against the ledge he stood on had wrapped itself around a large nearby rock, and occasionally flexed, but it showed no sign of releasing its grip or of attacking him.

Kim executed a backflip hurkey spring, dodging a lashing tentacle. As the octopus growled in frustration, she launched into a side hurdler liftup that landed her on top of the octopus' head.

Leaping just before the retaliatory strike landed, Kim's double backflip avoided the blow. The octopus emitted a deafening screech as it slapped itself, and the eye pulsed with hatred as it glared menacingly at Kim. "That move won us the state competition two years ago," Kim told the uninterested cephalopod.

As the fight entered a momentary lull as both combatants caught a brief respite, Ron's gaze fell upon that monstrous eye - the iris so dark it was nearly black, the slitted pupil so large he could even see inside to the muscles flexing and contracting as it tracked Kim's movements. Enrapt in his observations, he didn't blink as his gaze sank deeper and deeper into the octopus' eye.

"Ron!" Kim called as she jumped and kicked off the cavern wall. She performed a backflip that carried her over a lashing tentacle, then landed atop another tentacle's knot that the octopus was using to anchor itself, driving down with her boots with all the force of her momentum behind it, mentally bemoaning the fact that she wasn't wearing her sturdier mission boots despite their utter impracticality while swimming.

Ron didn't react to Kim's cry, seemingly mesmerized by the monstrous eye.

Kim rolled away from the thrashing tentacle that had just released its grip. As it drew back to launch another blow, she noticed the tentacle that she'd leaped over wrap itself around a boulder, anchoring itself. _"Ah ha,"_ she thought triumphantly. _"The robot parts must be too heavy - it can't stay on the surface without holding on."_

Her moment of distraction as she found the weakness in the creature lasted just slightly too long for her safety. The loosed tentacle lashed out and coiled around her body, encasing her in a muscular, slowly contracting cocoon. "Ron!" she cried out, straining and thrashing as the entrapping coils began to constrict.

"Ron!" she called again, hoarsely, as the tightening tentacle prevented her from drawing enough breath. Ron didn't move or respond.

"ron," Kim desperately tried again as spots began to appear before her eyes. His name was almost inaudible as life and breath were slowly squeezed from her. All the while, that monstrous eye watched her ever weakening struggles.

As though dazed, Ron slowly stepped forward, knelt, and rested his hand atop the tentacle gripping his ledge. His touch was almost gentle - neither a blow, nor an attempt to tickle, but despite the brevity and tentativeness, it had a profound effect.

Kim gasped and her lungs heaved as the tentacle that had been crushing her slowly began to loosen its grasp. She panted desperately, gulping in air for her oxygen-starved lungs as her compressed chest struggled to expand enough to draw sufficient breath.

Unmoved and seemingly even unaware of her plight, Ron continued to stare into the octopus' eye. As the grip holding Kim slackened further, its body slowly rotated until it was gazing back at him, ignoring its captive for the first time since the beginning of the fight.

When the tentacle had become slack enough, Kim slipped through the loosened coils to collapse awkwardly atop a small rock ledge. She desperately sucked in air, trying to recover from the effects of the crushing grip.

Ron softly stepped onto the tentacle and began to walk up the muscular limb. His balance was uncanny, atypically excellent for him, and he didn't sway as he walked up its flexing length.

Kim wanted to cry out in warning, but her body was too desperate in its attempts to regain breath to respond to her frantic thoughts. _"Ron..."_

The octopus' maw opened, and its razor sharp fangs spread like a vision of the gates of Hell as Ron walked up the organic walkway... closer and closer... and still closer to the octopus' mouth. Ron neither flinched nor blinked as he approached that terrible orifice - gaping like the mouth of Charybdis and fully capable of swallowing him whole - or even worse, of chomping him into tiny bits in only a few horrific masticating bites.

From within the opened maw, a hooked tongue, meters in length, dripping with yellowish slime and colored a deep, deep green emerged. As Ron neared the ovoid head, it reached out and slowly licked him, leaving a slimy trail from breastbone to ear.

"Ron," Kim finally managed to say aloud, rolling onto her side and reaching out for her friend as he walked unconcernedly into the proverbial lion's den. "Look out..." she panted, but was still too winded, unable to rise or distract the creature from Ron's incautious approach.

Suddenly, and without warning, Ron began to laugh. After a frightening pause, a strange sound emerged from the octopus' maw.

Kim blinked as she struggled to rise to her feet, managing only to rise to her hands and knees. _"Is it laughing?"_

Still laughing softly, Ron crouched on the metallic armor plate that surrounded the base of the creature's enormous head. His fingers scrabbled about on the polished alloy surface, seeking a grip, but after a moment, he was able to reach beneath a protective cover.

A sizzling sound erupted as a nimbus of crackling blue electrical discharge surrounded both Ron and the octopus, and as Ron and the creature screamed in unison, Ron's hand clutched convulsively inside the hidden compartment. With a grunt of effort, and with muscles twitching uncontrollably thanks to the electricity, he jerked his hand free, ripping something from the hidden socket. As the wires dangling from the thing in his grasp tore free, the electrical aura abruptly winked out.

Slumping beside the massive mouth, Ron glanced briefly at the thing in his hand, then negligently tossed it over the octopus' shoulder and into the water. It barely raised a splash as it went in, and the device quickly sank into the depths of the pool.

The massive tongue unrolled itself from inside the maw and gently began to lick Ron's face. Oddly, despite the ooze left in the tongue's wake, Ron didn't object to the action.

Kim stared in shock as she unsteadily rose to her feet. _"If I didn't know better, I'd swear that thing looks apologetic,"_ she thought. "Ron?" she asked aloud, her voice a pale whisper of her usual.

Ron blinked - making Kim realize how long it had been since the last time she had seen him do it - but he remained slightly distracted as he replied, "Yeah?"

"Are you okay?" she asked worriedly. The tongue continued to bathe Ron's face, leaving a trail of slime everywhere it touched. Ron was also _much_ too close to that collection of razor fangs for her to relax.

"We're fine, K.P." Ron mumbled. "Say 'hi' to my new friend."

"Some friend," Kim muttered. "Um..." she began at a louder volume, but couldn't think of a single thing to say.

"I think I'll call you 'Betty,'" Ron told the octopus, gazing up into that monstrous eye.

Kim stared at the huge, one-eyed creature and slowly mouthed the name, "Betty?" _"He has the most amazing knack with mutants,"_ she thought with wonder.

With things under control - or to be more specific, under Ron's control, Kim took a moment to collect herself. She wiped the slime left by the tentacle as best she could from her face and clothes, then scowled as she discovered neat circular holes sliced into her shirt and pants. And as Kim brushed at the slime, she also found the fine cuts in her skin that lay beneath them. _"Suction cup marks,"_ she realized. The wounds were minor, barely noticeable even, but the cuts were irritating... and she had _lots_ of them.

Injured, but undefeated, Kim shook off the distraction of the pain. "Ron? Shouldn't we be getting out of here?" she cautiously prodded, eyeing the octopus uneasily. She was reluctant to disturb him, unsure of the strength of his control or how long it would persist, but that dagger-fanged maw was far too close to Ron for her comfort.

"Oh, sure," Ron distantly agreed, sounding as though he didn't care one way or the other about the prospect of escape. "Betty?" he prompted.

Betty briefly crooned lovingly to Ron, then slammed a pair of tentacles against the fractured cavern wall. A few powerful blows later, and the wall crumbled into debris - the rock wall, the hidden door, and even the cement wall that had reinforced the rocky cavern were utterly annihilated.

"Um... Shall we go?" Kim tentatively suggested, jumping through the irregular opening to land on the tiled floor in the hallway beyond.

The octopus heaved its vast bulk out of the water and onto the crumbled remains of the wall. As Kim slowly backed down the corridor, it moved forward in a weird undulation, crawling on some of its tentacles, while pulling itself forward using still others.

From his perch on the octopus' robotic shoulder, Ron smiled dazedly, still not blinking despite the dust in the air left by the wall's destruction. "Senior's control room is just ahead," he told Kim - who didn't question his certainty as she eyed Ron and the octopus dubiously.

They moved slowly, limited by the octopus' speed, but despite the ungainly manner of her locomotion, Betty's progress was unrelenting and as inescapable as the tide. When they finally reached the end of the corridor, a sealed door blocked the strange trio's progress.

Kim was unsurprised to see the tentacles tear it - and the wall that contained it - down in seconds; her aching ribs knew full well how strong those fragile seeming limbs truly were. She stood as far away as she could from the creature, not wanting to be too close, but afraid to leave Ron alone with it, no matter how friendly it might seem.

A doorway suddenly opened with a "whoosh" in the room beyond the destroyed wall as an oiled, tanned, muscular figure entered. "Father, I am trying to perfect my tan, but I cannot hear my music while doing so. I must learn all the latest trends if I am to be a world famous pop singer, but I can not do this with all this noise! What is all this crashing and clanging that I am hearing coming from...?"

A tentacle shot out and enveloped the Speedo-clad Señor Senior, Junior before he could finish the sentence. The green limb flexed, setting the tiger-stripe coloration writhing as muscles bulged and shifted beneath the skin.

Kim's ribs ached in sympathy as Junior screamed girlishly, his voice reaching a register that even his favorite female pop idols couldn't reach. "Father, your fish has caught me!" he squealed.

The tentacle tightened around the wannabe pop idol, and Junior's face flushed a ghastly red-purple. He fell silent, unable to spare the air, nor move his torso enough to regain the lost breath.

Wincing, Kim turned to her friend and asked, "Ron? Shouldn't you ask Betty to put Junior down now? Ron?" Kim suddenly flinched as she caught sight of Ron's face.

A ghoulish smile leered from Ron's face, the expression an eerie match for the one on the fanged maw beside him. "Ron?" she asked again, hurrying over to her friend, dodging the tentacles' movements as she did. "Tell Betty to let Junior go," she harshly ordered him.

Junior's eyes bulged as a rattling whimper escaped from his pursed lips. The tentacle flexed, tightening again.

"**_RON!_**" Kim screamed in horror, fearing that Ron was about to kill Junior, using the octopus as the murder weapon.

Ron blinked, and the tentacle suddenly relaxed, dropping the younger Senior like so much garbage to lie in a twitching heap on the tiled floor. "K.P.?" Ron asked, his expression... strange, but no longer quite so horrifying.

"Are you... alright?" Kim tentatively asked. In the room ahead, Junior's crumpled form was crawling away, making Kim marvel at the young man's resiliency (_"I know exactly what being crushed like that feels like,"_ she thought, feeling an odd sense of admiration), but she ignored his flight, remaining by her friend's side and gripping Ron's shoulder reassuringly as his face slowly blanched as what had happened - and what he'd almost done - began to sink in.

"Stay with me, Ron," Kim urged desperately. _"I really wish Rufus were here,"_ she thought frantically. _"What happens if Ron loses control - either of himself or of Betty?"_

A trilling croon came from between the octopus' fangs, and Ron's expression approached a semblance of normalcy as he smiled slightly. "I'm okay. Sorry about that, K.P. I just..." he trailed off, unable to really explain what had happened.

"It's okay," Kim soothed, squeezing gently before releasing his shoulder, relieved that he sounded normal, even if he still looked more than a little discomfited and distressed. "Let's just go wrap up the Seniors, then head back to Middleton. We do have to get back in time for detention you know," she teased.

"Aw, thanks for reminding me," Ron mumbled, but his smile grew more natural.

Although still leery of the octopus - whose power she'd just seen an unnecessary and graphic reminder of - Kim judged Ron needed her support. She hopped up beside him, onto Betty's armored shoulder, and held his hand comfortingly.

At Ron's prompting, Betty crawled after Junior, following the trail of cocoa butter and octopus slime he had left on the dusty floor.

xxxXXXxxx

Kim scowled as they rounded a corner and discovered an opening in the wall of the room they entered. Through the archway lay a grotto - a classic villainous escape route, and the kind that the Seniors had often used to best effect.

Taking a quick look around the room, despite the obvious potential escape route, Kim noted a chair lying on its side in from of an abandoned wall of monitors. Some of the screens on the monitors displayed only static, the cameras feeding those display units obviously having been destroyed either in the fight or during Betty's breakout, but the rest all showed a much too familiar cavern.

The sound of a propeller starting returned Kim's gaze to the grotto. As she leaped from Betty's shoulder to race towards the sound of the engine noise, she heard a distant cry. "Farewell, Kim Possible..."

As she stood in the arched opening and looked out across the grotto, Kim could see a seaplane picking up speed as it headed towards the open sea - and a successful escape. As the plane roared into the distance, picking up speed, the rest of Senior's call was rendered mostly inaudible thanks to both distance and the roar of the plane's engine, but the words "vision," "mutant," "foiled," and "squid," reached her ears.

Scowling, Kim shaded her eyes as the plane took to the air. She tried to guess the course they were following, but she knew it would be of little help. _"It's too easy to change direction once they're out of sight, and a man of Senior's wealth can find a safe harbor almost anywhere."_

Turning away from the sight of the fleeing Seniors, Kim found Ron climbing down from the octopus' shoulder, leaning on one of her tentacles for support. _"Now comes the hard part,"_ she thought.

"So how are we getting back, K.P.?" Ron asked.

"Ron," Kim began carefully. "You do know that Betty can't come with us, right?"

Ron looked crestfallen. "Are you sure? I mean, she doesn't have fur, so dad's allergies won't flare up..." he trailed off hopefully.

Kim simply shook her head in sad negation.

Sighing, Ron looked over his shoulder, but even Betty looked resigned to the separation. Their gazes locked for a time, and Kim wondered what they were saying - not to mention _how_ they were saying it; if their conversation was even audible, she couldn't hear it, no matter how intently she strained her ears. Finally, Ron tearfully told the giant octopus, "I'll miss you too."

Kim stepped back as all eight tentacles rose to surround Ron, embracing him in an eight-fold hug that surrounded him in a cocoon of tiger-striped green. Kim was slightly nervous as she watched the play of muscles in the limbs surrounding Ron's body, but they eventually relaxed, releasing Ron and leaving him safe and unharmed - albeit thoroughly beslimed.

Ron followed Kim as she moved back into the lair, and wiped his eyes, dashing away both tears and the yellow ooze left by the octopus' kiss goodbye. Together they watched Betty rip the entrance to the grotto wider, crumbling concrete and bending steel rebar like pipe cleaners as she demolished the side of the building. The giant octopus crawled through the enlarged opening and splashed down into the warm water of the grotto. With a final wave of a tentacle, she vanished beneath the surface, but a rippling wake showed her movement underwater, heading swiftly towards the Mediterranean and the ocean beyond.

"She'll be fine, Ron," Kim reassured him. Wrapping her arm around his shoulders, she hugged him briefly, then quickly stepped away with a nauseated expression. She shook her arm, loosing the dribbles of slime that had been transferred to her in the brief embrace. _"I just hope the rest of the world will be fine with Betty out there,"_ she admitted to herself.

"I know she will," Ron mumbled, his eyes staring into the narrow section of ocean that could be seen through the grotto's entrance. The wake showing Betty's progress vanished as it left the hidden grotto, the octopus taking advantage of the deeper waters. "She said she knew a place she could go. One that I'd be able to find her..." he said, though his brow furrowed with a hint of confusion as he did.

"I'm sure you'll see her again, someday," Kim told him. "And can I just say... Nice job, Ron. Score another victory for the mutant whisperer," Kim grinned as she headed towards the grotto to look for transportation away from the now abandoned lair.

Ron shrugged, his eyes still following the distant rise and fall of the waves, envisioning the octopus swimming somewhere beneath.

"And hey," Kim pointed out, trying to distract him from his funk, "when Wade sends our report off to Dr. Director, I'm sure she'll be just _thrilled_ to hear about her namesake."

"Aw, Kim," Ron mumbled, finally turning away from his depressed contemplation. He quickly followed Kim as she walked out of the lair, heading towards the grotto.

Despite his depression at losing his new friend to the ocean, Ron found himself smiling as he followed Kim. The breeze blowing off the sea through Kim's hair carried both her subtle scent and the smell of the ocean to him, and he found the combination to be simultaneously soothing and exciting.

His heart raced as he climbed into one of the Seniors' abandoned boats as Kim started the motor. Closing his eyes, he continued to contentedly drink in the enticing combination of scents as she steered the boat out of the grotto and into the open sea.

xxxXXXxxx

Steve Barkin frowned distractedly as he glanced at his watch. _"Stoppable better get here soon,"_ he thought, irritated both at the delay and being made to wait. It was nearing the deadline he had set, and the thought of being ignored - on any matter, let alone one as important as this - was troublesome on several levels. _"Possible, too,"_ he grudgingly amended his thoughts.

A distant rumble distracted the administrator from his concerns, and as he stepped from beneath the front portico of Middleton High, his eyes roved over the empty parking lot and the street beyond, searching for the source of the irritating sound. _"What **is** that noise?"_ he wondered.

The rumble steadily grew in both volume and intensity, until it finally became distinct enough to be identified as the roar of engines - and more than a few of them. As Mr. Barkin watched in surprise, a small pack of motorcycles - mostly choppers with raked and extended front trees, with a few that were more conventional in appearance, but still bore the hallmarks of extensive modification and customization - turned into the high school's driveway.

Scowling - he liked surprises less even than he liked funny looks - Mr. Barkin marched down the front walkway to intercept the motorcycles as they slowly approached the school. _"Unusual,"_ he noted to himself before thinking, _"I don't need this aggravation."_

The riders came to a halt, parking the two-wheeled vehicles in a rough semicircle centered on the ramp comprising the school's main passenger unloading zone. The engines screamed as the riders fed them gas, their gloved fingers goosing the throttles. Then, as the sound reached a screaming crescendo, in perfect unison the engines were cut, and silence fell over the parking lot.

The sudden silence seemed magnified in the aftermath of the machines' roar. For a moment, in the stillness, not a sound could be heard - even the wind seemed to be holding its breath in wary anticipation.

Mr. Barkin's scowl deepened, and his mounting irritation was plain in his expression. _"If they think something like this is going to intimidate Steve Barkin, they've got another think coming,"_ he promised himself. He turned his scowl on the riders, and slowly ran his gaze over each - returning the intimidation factor in spades without the need for any mechanical assistance.

Most of the riders wore helmets that covered their entire heads, with darkened visors to hide their faces from view besides, but two of the riders - parked at the center of the arc - wore less concealing headgear. Beyond the choice of headgear, the two also shared a similarity of features. Indeed, their faces were so similar that the commonality of appearance led Mr. Barkin to suspect the two were related, even though the woman's skin coloration was quite different from the man's.

No matter the headgear, all the riders were uniformly dressed in a homogenous - if diverse - assortment of denim and leather clothing in varying degrees of cleanliness and repair ranging from filthy and decrepit to fresh-from-the-wrapper new. The one constant in their wardrobe - aside from the materials involved - was that all were entirely covered, from head to toe to fingertip; not an inch of uncovered skin was visible. Even the apparent leaders of the crew shared the same all-covering style of dress, save for their faces.

As his gaze returned to those two revealed faces, Mr. Barkin's brow furrowed. Something about the faces was disturbing, though Mr. Barkin was hard-pressed to identify precisely what exactly it was about them that made them so disturbing.

They weren't be any stretch of the imagination what he would call attractive. But on the other hand, neither were they outstandingly hideous. Instead, a subtle asymmetry and an odd rubbery appearance to the flesh marred their features.

_"Botox overdose?"_ he speculated, wondering what could have given their skin such an... abhorrent appearance. _"Skin transplant? Burn victims?"_ Whatever the cause, the texture of their skin looked repellently abnormal.

Perhaps it was simply the expression they shared that was so disturbing. They both wore a look of disdain and subtle mockery that definitely grated on his already stressed nerves.

Mr. Barkin was mature enough - and experienced enough - not to let such insignificant matters as beauty or its lack greatly influence him. His experiences with both the military and the school system had given him ample evidence that outward appearance had little if anything to do with inner character. Despite that knowledge, with this pair, he couldn't quite seem to ignore their... _odd_ appearance.

_"Something about their foreheads..."_ Mr. Barkin tried to consider them dispassionately, but found his eyes drawn again and again to the odd cant of their foreheads - and the way they sloped from beneath the front lip of the helmets down to prominent brow ridges. The curve of the bone seemed other than human.

Deliberately turning his gaze from the two bare-faced riders, Mr. Barkin glanced once more over the others. They were silent, and while their faces were hidden, he could feel the weight of their gaze returning his own regard from beneath darkened visors. They showed no visible reaction to his open observation of them, nor did they seem to be in any way concerned by his presence.

Shaking his head to throw off both the subtle wrongness of the group, and his own unconscious reactions to it, he attempted to be civil despite his distrust of the situation. When it was clear the riders weren't going to speak, he broke the silence. "What's your business here?" he asked, his tone relatively mild, but still pointed as he raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

"Ease up, man," the bare-faced male growled, his words inflected oddly, as though English weren't his primary tongue. "We're just dropping off."

Mr. Barkin blinked, and suddenly realized that while he'd been distracted by the oddity of the duo's facial features, he'd missed the presence of a pair of smaller figures mounted behind them. As he watched, the previously unseen duo awkwardly clambered from their perches on the pillion seats behind the shielding bulk of the larger riders that had hidden them from view, then stiffly began to stretch their legs.

The two dismounted bikers wore helmets that hid their faces as completely as the other riders, and were shrouded in oversized jackets - the androgynous one in leather, while the other - who Mr. Barkin thought was probably male - one wore a jean jacket. Considering their size relative to the pair that had driven them, Mr. Barkin could readily tell the source of the jackets - and also why he'd been unable to see them while they were mounted on the motorcycles.

As the one with the jean jacket stretched, "he" turned enough to reveal "his" back - and the gang colors displayed there. Whether deliberately or not, "his" stance spread the bunched material of the jacket, allowing Mr. Barkin to see the colors clearly.

In an arc across the shoulders, in a red the color of drying blood, gothic script proclaimed him to be a member of the "Ghouls MC". Mirroring it along the bottom, in a smaller size, but an identical font and color, was also written "Lowerton." In the center of his back was a face (possibly human) with an uncanny resemblance to the two bare-faced riders.

Despite (or because of) the skill of the artist who had painted it, Mr. Barkin couldn't be entirely certain the face was intended to be human; the same features that were "off" in the two riders had been exaggerated to such a degree that the face appeared to share as much canine ancestry as human, and correspondingly the impact was substantially more disturbing.

The inhuman appearance of it was startling, and a lesser man would have shuddered away from the sheer visceral disquiet emanating from the horrific and unnatural graphic. Steve Barkin simply deepened his scowl, maintaining his composure even in the face of the abhorrent image.

The dismounted figures, having stretched out the kinks, moved between the parked motorcycles into the center of the arc, until they stood between the riders and Mr. Barkin. The one in the leather jacket began a complicated dap, exchanging a rapid series of taps, gestures, and interlocking fingers with the male rider. The other simply pulled off his helmet, revealing sweaty blonde hair, thoroughly mussed and disordered by the protective helmet.

"Stoppable?" Barkin demanded, his eyes widening. As the administrator watched, the complicated handclasp between the other two ended with their fists pressed together, their knuckles and the first finger joints meshing. The smaller figure then removed its helmet, revealing a mane of crimson hair and a smiling feminine face. _"And Possible?"_ he finished silently.

_"Of course."_ His scowl returned as Mr. Barkin shook his head in disgusted self-mockery, a bit of the disturbing aura banished by the familiar presence of the teens. _"I should have realized they'd be at the center of any weirdness,"_ he scolded himself for missing the obvious explanation.

"Thanks for the ride, 'Crusher," Kim told the man seated on the motorcycle as she slipped off the oversized jacket. Without the enveloping black leather shrouding her form, her figure lost its androgyny.

The male grinned, his lips stretching almost unnaturally wide as he slipped his returned jacket on over his denim shirt before hooking Kim's helmet to the rear seat on his motorcycle where Kim had until recently been seated. "It's the least I can do after the way you helped my brother," he replied.

Ron made a move to return his jacket as well, but the female rider held up a warding palm, halting his movement with his arm still outstretched. "You can keep my colors if you want," she told the teen, her eyes intense above a grin that seemed strangely... hungry. "I think you'd enjoy running with us."

Turning on the woman, the male Kim had called "'Crusher" quellingly shot her a cold look. "He's already been claimed. You can tell as easily as I can - and we don't poach. Remember?"

The woman snorted but reclaimed her jacket anyway. "I'm willing to share," she pouted, the expression looking decidedly odd on her face.

Ron jumped as he was suddenly goosed. After spinning around to see the female rider's lips broaden into an even wider grin, he quickly hid behind Kim, holding her shoulders protectively as he peeked through the shielding halo of her hair.

"Sorry, Maneater," Kim chuckled, amused by the entire exchange. _"I wonder how fast Ron would run if I told her he's not really mine?"_ she wondered idly.

"His loss," the rider grinned, her amusement overshadowing her disappointment. She adjusted the straps on the helmet Ron had worn, then replaced the smaller helmet she had been wearing with it. She stowed her spare in a set of leather saddlebags hanging across the back of her bike, then joined her compatriots in starting her engine.

"Let's go," 'Crusher ordered, waving one hand in an archaic cavalry command. He gunned his engine and led the riders away from the school, the sound of their motors quickly fading as they roared off into the west.

"You've got some interesting friends, Possible," Mr. Barkin commented, his disapproving scowl firmly in place.

With the riders gone, Ron stepped away from Kim, an odd expression on his face. He seemed somehow conflicted - as well as confused - as he stood a few paces away from her with his nose crinkled.

"They're not friends, exactly," Kim smiled as she turned to face the administrator, ignoring the odd look on Ron's face. "But they're not as bad as they look. We helped out Gerry's - he goes by Skullcrusher, mostly - brother once; he runs Pickman's Mortuary down in Lowerton."

Mr. Barkin blinked, slowly recovering the composure that had begun to erode thanks to the unusual method of the teens' arrival - and the even more unusual motorcyclists. _"You'd think I'd be used to this kind of thing around these two,"_ he silently berated himself, still disgusted with himself for not recognizing the situation quickly enough.

Shaking off his moment of distraction, Mr. Barkin glanced at his watch. _"They barely made it."_ "In any case, you're just in time. Another ten minutes and it would have been extra detention for you both," he informed them.

"Aw, man," Ron mumbled. "That is getting so old," he kicked at the pavement, his thin rubber boots emitting a pained squeak as he did.

"I said 'would have,'" Mr. Barkin growled in retort. "Want to make it 'will be'?" he threatened.

"No," Ron admitted, instantly caving to the administrator.

"And what took you so long?" Mr. Barkin asked crossly. "You've known about this appointment for days," he reminded them, pointedly tapping his watch for emphasis.

"We couldn't get a direct flight," Ron shrugged.

"It was a little more complicated than that," Kim explained while frowning quellingly at Ron. "We commandeered one of Señor Senior, Senior's abandoned boats - as is our right as duly deputized agents of international law enforcement," Kim began, "to get to France, where we turned the boat over to the gendarmes before catching a flight to Go City..."

"...where we hitched a ride on a coal train to Lowerton," Ron chipped in. "It was dusty, but convenient."

"And the Ghouls brought us to Middleton on their motorcycles," Kim concluded. "It was a bit of a roundabout route, but we made it on time. So what's the big deal?" Kim queried. "Why did we have to be here? Not that it's not important to be at school," she hastened to add as she pulled off her mission gloves and tucked them into a pocket.

Without answering or reacting to her hurried addendum, Mr. Barkin bluntly ordered, "Stoppable, give Possible your rodent."

"Rufus is still at home, Mr. B," Ron commented. "He wasn't feeling good this morning. Who knew he couldn't stomach Norwegian cheese? But..." he trailed off as he experienced a major sense of déjà vu. "Uh oh; what district policy did I violate now?" he wondered aloud, frowning in confusion.

Kim blinked, seeing the parallels to the previous incident now that Ron had mentioned the possibility. "Did the district come up with something new?" she asked curiously. _"I can't think of anything he's done that would rile the district. Not that they know about, anyway."_ She idly scratched at a circular scab on her forearm as she pondered the odd circumstances of the "detention."

"Negatory. Just follow me," Mr. Barkin ordered, walking along the paved path leading to the rear of the school.

Shrugging despite being surprised that Mr. Barkin wasn't entering the school building, Kim obediently followed him with Ron reluctantly bringing up the rear, still racking his brain and trying to think of what he could possibly have done that was bad enough for the district to decide to intervene once again.

**

To Be Continued...

**

**Author's Notes: ** Special thanks to Joss Whedon for creating the inspiration behind one of the lesser characters in this chapter. Also, sorry about the minor cliffhanger here, but I decided to shorten this chapter to this point since it was already pretty long, and this was a good place to break the flow.

Thanks to those who have reviewed to date, and I hope you're still enjoying this work - let me know by R&R!

xxxXXXxxx

**Note 1 Bonus!** I decided to cut the following paragraph since it's a little too flippant for the air of looming menace I was trying to build in the context where it was, but because I found it amusing, I'm adding it as a special bonus - and one you don't even have to go to "The Shape Of Things Yet to Come" to read...

Contextually, it was originally at the spot in this chapter labeled, "(Note 1)"

xxxXXXxxx

A long section of tentacle briefly breached the surface before submerging once more, hiding beneath the glowing water. _"I swear,"_ Kim thought distantly, even as she readied herself for the coming fight, _"If this is **anything** like those cartoons Larry has hidden under his bed, I'll burn his entire Ios collection while he watches."_

xxxXXXxxx

P.S. If you understand the reference (and this is another one of those things I'm not going to explain in the interests of ratings), don't chide me if you're being a purist about animation terminology - after all, it's written from Kim's perspective, and she wouldn't care.

**

To be continued...

**


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